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Ostberg angry after early exit

Mads Ostberg was left angry by the nature of his retirement from the Rally of France

Ostberg, one of the World Rally Championship's brightest young talents, is driving a Ford Fiesta S2000 on the Strasbourg-based event, but retired on the second stage of the day after setting the fastest Group N time on the opener.

The Norwegian slid off the road and was unable to rejoin the stage under his own power. Ostberg jumped out of the car to beckon the help of nearby marshals and police. Unfortunately for him, they refused to help - and refused to allow anybody from the 70-strong crowd on the corner to offer assistance.

Ostberg has now retired and will return under superally regulations tomorrow.

After going off the road, Ostberg was not allowed to slow the oncoming crews down and his car was hit by a following competitor, before the stage was stopped to allow the recovery vehicle in to move the stricken Ford.

Ostberg said: "The junction was a 90-degree right. We had marked the corner with gravel, I knew it was slippery - but it was more slippery than I thought. We understeered off on the outside. We hit the barrier, but the barrier had been bent by [Eyvind] Brynildsen, who had been off in the same corner. We then got stuck in the hole.

"The damage on the car was quite low. I ran 20 metres to ask the seven or eight marshals and 15 police officers, but they wouldn't allow anybody to help. We had quite a hard argument with them, but they wouldn't do anything. The marshals wouldn't have been able to get the car back on the road, they were just some old men and some women, they couldn't help.

"There were 60 or 70 people who could have come down and got us going again. All of the crowd were booing the police; if this had been Finland, we would have been back on the road in under a minute."

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