Kubica to resume rally on Saturday

Robert Kubica will return to Rally Mexico for Saturday, after crashing when poised to take the rally lead on Friday morning.

Kubica was 11.4 seconds faster than rally leader Sebastien Ogier after just seven miles of the El Chocolate stage, which he had begun only four seconds down on the World Rally champion. But he  then clipped a bank and later rolled.

"We had a good feeling in the long stage, everything had gone well in the previous stage and I was happy," he related. "But it was very slippery. We had good grip on the braking, but very poor lateral grip and it was hard to know where the surface was changing.

"When we came to a right-hand corner over a crest, the grip level had changed and gone back to being very slippery. I lost the line and we hit the bank. We nearly rolled, but didn't. The steering wasn't straight and we had a puncture. The [steering] arm was cracked, but not broken.

"We changed the puncture and carried on. I was driving carefully, checking for the car behind – I didn't want to create dust for [Benito] Guerra. Then on the straight, the steering arm broke and instead of going left the car went right and we hit the bank and rolled."

Despite the crash, Kubica remained upbeat about his pace. He will be running early in the start order for Saturday but is optimistic of setting similarly strong times.

"I was driving very nicely, I didn't know the pace [was so fast], but it felt good," he said. "I was not risking a lot, just driving at what felt like a good speed. We will come back tomorrow and try to find that again."

Kubica, Kris Meeke, Hayden Paddon and potentially Ott Tanak – who crashed into a lake on Friday – could all be back under Rally2 regulations on Saturday after their accidents on the first leg. As Rally2 competitors run at the head of the start order, their presence would mean championship leader Sebastien Ogier would get a significantly better road position than he had feared.

Ogier leads the rally after seven stages despite being convinced that this would be impossible as he was running first on the road.

Originally on Autosport.com