Rautenbach eager to drive again

Rautenbach went off the road on the second run at the Myhinpaa test, the penultimate stage of the ninth round of the World Rally Championship, and crashed at a near flat-out corner.

Despite the severity of the shunt, the 25-year-old is already looking forward to his next event, Rally Australia.

He said: "It was a big, big crash. There's no doubt it was the biggest I've ever had. The main thing, the only thing I guess, is that Dan [Barritt, co-driver] and I walked away from it.

"Right now I want to get back in the car. I want to drive again and if I could, I'd be back in the C4 this afternoon. It's always a bit of a shock [to have a crash like this]. People say there's no such thing as a small accident in Finland and I guess they're right."

Having been through the data from the crash, Rautenbach confirmed there was no technical problem with the C4 WRC.

He added: "We don't know what caused it. The team overlaid the data from the first run through the stage and I was going a little bit quicker, but I braked in the same way and the car snapped sideways.

"The thing is, we're not dealing with a race circuit here. Okay, it's the second time down the same stretch of road, but the condition of that road could have changed from the first to second pass.

"We don't know. We could see from the data that I got full steering lock on and had the throttle buried - it was just starting to come back - when we ran out of road. We hit the ditch and rolled. I don't know what the speed was, but it was probably up around 150kph or something."

Both Rautenbach and his co-driver Barritt emerged from the car unscathed and they will continue their WRC programme with the French manufacturer until the end of the season.