Esapeka Lapi Shows Impressive Rally Skills at Sardinia WRC, But Forced to Quit

Esapeka Lapland. Photo: Dirtfish

After the Sardinia WRC Rally, Esapeka Lapi stated that the 1st and 2nd place in Sardinia was an “important team result” for Hyundai, but he was disappointed that he could not fight for victory. And through no fault of your own.

Lapi showed perhaps one of his best drives at any WRC stage at the start of the rally. Despite the difficult weather conditions, Lapi engaged in an intense battle for the victory with Sebastien Ogier, representative of “Toyota”.

After the first day, the leader was Lapi, who was 0.1 second ahead of Ogier. Although Ogier took the lead for a moment on Saturday and was able to increase the advantage to 18.2 seconds, after the 13th stop Lapi got closer to Ogier to 4.3 seconds. On the 14th lap, Ogier made a mistake and retired.

Photo: Honza Froněk

Lapi found out about Ogier’s failure before going on the track, so the Finnish athlete was forced to quit and not to engage in a battle for victory with his teammate Thierry Neuville, who was closely following Lapi. At the finish of the speed stage, Lapi lost 27 seconds to Neuville, and another 12 seconds in the next lap.

“When I saw Seb, who had retired, it was clear that I could no longer fight for victory. It was an “easy” decision to quit.” At the end of the rally, Lapi said in the post-finish interview: ”You have to accept such things, even if it hurts. It is as it is. Hopefully Neuville will win and we will take 1st and 2nd place. And then we will prepare for the Kenyan WRC.” When asked by the commentator that Lapi could win there, the Finnish athlete said with a sly smile: ”It all depends on who will be behind me at that time.”

Also later for the portal motorsport.com Lapi revealed that “It was a very important result for our team. We wanted to fight for the victory and we managed to win 1st-2nd place. Maybe I feel a little less frustrated than on Saturday, but there is still something I miss. I had big chances to win it, so it’s disappointing that I can’t really fight for it. I’m not saying that I would have won, but at least it would be nice to fight for the victory until the end.”

Photo: Martin Hlinka

Hyundai has already made it clear that Neuville is its main focus in the drivers’ championship. Team Director Sirils Abitebuls refutes the assumptions that the team would have given Lapi a team order after Ogier’s failure. But the team manager understands his driver’s frustration that he did not win.

“I understand Lapi’s frustration and to be clear there was no team order, we simply informed him that Seb was out of the game [14. posmā]and so he did what he had to do in the circumstances, which was to control the speed and risk against the result,” says Abiteboul.

“It meant that he lost a position to Neuville. I think he was aware of the team’s strategy and the situation and I completely understand his frustration. I think the consistent action that we want to achieve from a championship perspective will benefit not only Thierry but also Pages.”

Immediately after the finish of the rally, when Lapi revealed his frustration at the lost victory, Abiteboul said: “I have seen Esapeka’s comments where you can feel that he is happy, but you can also feel his frustration, but he is very much involved in this success. Personally in my opinion, he was the best driver of this rally.”