Pirelli drivers have disastrous recce
Three of the five Pirelli Star Drivers suffered the worst possible start to the Acropolis Rally of Greece when they crashed on the recce for the event
New Zealander Mark Tapper was the first to hit trouble, when he collided with Bernardo Sousa on the opening day of the recce. Worse was to follow, when Jon Williams and Jarkko Nikara crashed head on into each other on the second day of recce.
Pirelli Star Driver supervisor Phil Short said: "It's fair to say the recce was fairly fraught! Mark's accident happened after Bernardo Sousa stopped after a crest. Mark couldn't see the car in the dust and ran into the back of him. Mark then transferred to the support car.
"That night I impressed upon the drivers that they had to be extra careful on the second day of the recce because we now had no back-up car and any incident might mean them missing the rest of the recce."
The next incident happened while the crews were making notes for the event's opening stage. Nine kilometres into the stage, Williams went the wrong way at a junction. His co-driver George Gwynn realised his mistake and instructed Williams to turn around. When they were making their way back to the stage, they met Nikara - who had made the same mistake - and crashed head on.
"That was a very unfortunate incident," said Short. "In the three kilometres Jon drove off route, there were between 50 and 60 corners, about five of those were blind and narrow and they met Jarkko in one of those corners.
"Jarkko's car was too badly damaged to carry on, so the four of them got into Jon's car and drove to the next stage, where they did the recce for the stage two at a time, as per the regulations."
Despite only making one pass of the opening stage, Nikara still managed to set the fastest Group N time this morning - beating all the registered Production crews.
The Pirelli Star Driver programme is a new initiative by the WRC's tyre supplier that sees a group of emerging drivers from various regions given identical Group N Mitsubishi Lancers for several rounds of the world championship.
Be part of the Autosport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Subscribe and access Autosport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments