WRC teams angry over 'dangerous' Rally Mexico opening stage jump

A jump was added near the end of Thursday night's Guanajuato street stage - the severity of which threw the rear of the cars into the air, with organisers later calling a halt to the stage with three cars still to run.

One driver told Autosport: "This is crazy. When does this stop? Why do we need these stupid, dangerous jumps?

"This is a great stage, one of the best for the atmosphere and the fans - it's fantastic. Why do we need to make it more exciting? We don't."

The same jump will be used on the Leon street stage later in the event, but at a considerably lower speed.

The driver continued: "All the time it's about jumps now.

"We see this big jump in Finland last year [the Laukaa arena jump] and now the organisers here in Mexico make the same thing in El Brinco.

"What's going on? When does the FIA say this is enough? This is stupid and this is dangerous.

"Take a look at some of the footage of some of the cars, we take off, we fly and when we land it's so close and anything can happen."

The crews also raised concerns that the FIA safety delegate Michele Mouton did not drive through the stage ahead of them.

Mouton has, however, answered the drivers' calls to remove a speed bump placed in a flat-out corner of Friday's Ortega test.

The organisers have worked on repairing the roads for the Leon-based event but, in addition to resurfacing, drainage gullies and speed bumps have also been introduced in some sections.

While the crews are comfortable with most changes, the alteration to Ortega was a cause for concern.

M-Sport driver Elfyn Evans crashed on this test last year and he was keen to see it moved.

Evans told Autosport: "This speed bump is just around corner from where I had a mass accident last year - it's about 300 metres after that place.

"It was just unnecessary really. I guess the guy in the house nearby had asked for it to be put in to keep the dust down or something, but it was in the middle of a sixth-gear left-hander."

There was also concern over alterations being made to the El Chocolate stage while teams were completing the recce.

"This was in a place where the road is used twice, once on the Chocolate stage and once on a Sunday stage (Mesa Cuata)," said Citroen's Esapekka Lappi.

"We had done the recce for Chocolate and then when we were coming through for the recce of the other stage, we found these guys putting a [ARMCO] barrier on the inside of the corner, there were some metal poles in there to stop us from cutting the corner.

"If we weren't doing the Sunday stage, we would have arrived and not known about this change.

"This is not so good, the changes should be made before we start the recce."