Evans crashes after receiving time penalty
Elfyn Evans has crashed out of Rally Sweden just hours after receiving a 10-second penalty for her wild finish on Saturday night’s stage in the Rally WC round.
The Toyota driver rushed hard in the opening stage of Sunday morning when he spun into a snow bank. The impact hit the GR Yaris violently, but damage to the front of the car forced the Welshman out of the rally.
Evans had been second and tried to roll in the rally leader and Toyota teammate Kalle Rovanpera after receiving a time penalty for a wild end to yesterday’s spectator stage in Umeå center. The sanction meant that he faced a deficit of 18.3 s instead of 8.3 s.
Evans misjudged the last corner of Saturday night’s spectator scene, which resulted in the Welshman slipping into a snow bank.
The soft snow bank pulled Yaris off the road and in response, Evans chose to lower the gas to push through and over the snow bank, crossing the time beam in the process.
After using an alternative route to reach the stop line, the event caught the eye of the competition leaders and as a result, Evans and co-driver Scott Martin together with Toyota’s sports director Kaj Lindström were called to the stewards late on Saturday night.
Martin explained that it was not possible to back the car out of the snow bank and chose to return to the defined road at the earliest time.
But the stewards determined that they had gained an advantage by using the route. Despite the mistakes, Evans lost only 2.6s against Rovanpera on stage.
Elfyn Evans, Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT
Photo by: Toyota Racing
“By entering the last curve at high speed, the crew gained a time advantage when they crossed the flying finish line because the finish line was located right at the end of the corner,” it said in a steward report.
“Although the crew stopped between the yellow warning sign and the stop sign, the stop was not intentional and was due to an incident.
“The trustees conclude that this is a violation of Article 19 (2) and the time penalty above is proportionate in the above circumstances.”
Evans’ death leaves Rovanpera with a lead of 23.9s over Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville with three stages left.