Race against time for Ingrassia

Volkswagen Motorsport co-driver Julien Ingrassia will have to wait until next week to discover whether or not he’ll be well enough to tackle Rally Finland in August.

The Frenchman, who co-drives for championship leader Sebastien Ogier, is recovering from surgery after breaking his collarbone falling off a bicycle three weeks ago.

He missed Volkswagen’s pre-event test for Rallye Deutschland while he recuperated, and had been expected to return to the co-driver’s seat on 1 August when the eighth round of the WRC starts.

However the complex nature of the injury means that plan now hangs in the balance.

“I’m getting better and better, but I did not break my collarbone in a simple way so it was quite a puzzle for the doctors to rebuild it,” Ingrassia told wrc.com.

“I now have a 30cm scar, and for the next 16 months the bone will be held together with a titanium plate and nine screws. I must thank the team of doctors led by Professor Heiß and Doctor Peil for doing such a thorough job.

“For the first ten first days I couldn’t do very much and was stuck at home watching Wimbledon, the Tour de France and UFC on television. Now I’m having a lot of physiotherapy to recover the best way possible. We will do some tests in ten days to see if I do Finland rally or not.

“For sure I want to be there, and I’m training in this way now, but if the medical staff say that it would be dangerous or stupid to go, then I’d have to be clever and think to miss one event to be sure to do the rest of the season.”