Ostberg hopes for Saturday restart

Norway’s Mads Ostberg hopes to rejoin Rally Argentina on Saturday following a crash today that left him nursing an injured hand.

Ostberg began Argentina as one of the favourites to do well, and was placed second overall when his Citroen DS3 crashed 16km into Friday’s opening stage. WRC2 favourite Ott Tanak crashed shortly afterwards at the same place.

“It happened at a small jump in a right hand corner,” Ostberg told wrc.com. “It was flat in my pace notes, still I braked a little bit, but the rear kicked up a lot.

“I landed on the front and when we were back down the car touched something on the outside [of the road] so we destroyed the front left corner. Also something happened with the gearbox so that’s the end for now.”

Ostberg does not believe the damage will prevent him getting out again on Saturday. “It doesn’t need a lot of things. Back in service they should have no problems to fix it.”

The Norwegian will also get his right hand looked at, which was hurt during some frantic steering corrections. “I have some pain there after trying to control the car,” he explained. “After we hit the outside we almost rolled, so I had to do some work and there were some really hard kicks in the steering.”