Wilks blames dry set-up for exit

Briton Wilks crashed out on the eighth stage as he was locked in a battle with Sordo for the junior crown. The Suzuki driver needed to win the event, with Sordo well down the order, to capture the title.

But it all went wrong for Wilks on SS8 - and he believes his choice to stick with dry settings was ultimately responsible for his exit.

"I left this car in a really dry set-up even though I knew there was a little bit of damp," he told autosport.com. "I even left the rear anti-roll bar as it was, although I did deliberate about that.

"We had a couple of small slides (in SS8) then about 10km in there was a long straight in sixth gear into a third gear right-hander. The back of the car stepped out suddenly and basically forced me to turn in a metre earlier than I wanted to.

"The car went up onto two wheels and I realised there wasn't enough road to counteract it. I had to turn with it, the car went over onto its roof and came up to rest against a tree on its side."

Although the crash brings a disappointing end to Wilks' season, he is not too downbeat about his performance.

"Even with this I am not taking too many downers from this event," he added. "The title was always an outside bet here, but we have been much, much closer performance wise that we were in Germany. It has been a proper race."