WRC: Ogier pushes back against complaints over rally safety

World Rally champion Sebastien Ogier has called for a balanced approach to any potential safety changes in response to Ott Tanak's dramatic crash into a lake during Rally Mexico.

While concerned by Tanak's crash and the response time to the accident, Ogier underlined that risk is inherent in the sport.

"We are doing rallying," Ogier told AUTOSPORT. "There will always be places where it is not good to go off.

"Take the [Col de] Turini [on the Monte Carlo Rally] – there are many places on that stage that if you jump [off the road], then it's finished; you would jump only once.

"There are many places like that in the year. Hopefully we can stay away from bad things happening, like we have for quite a lot of years now. "For sure, everybody is trying to improve the safety of the car, but about the road... it's still rallying.

"We can do some work with the straw bales and things like that, but where it happened for Ott, it's a bit of bad luck that he broke the car in the corner before and then went off in the wrong place."

Ogier's Volkswagen team boss Jost Capito said the WRC might have to accept that freak accidents could happen on stages and it was impossible to prepare for every eventuality.

"This was a new situation, the car going underwater," he said. "Now, do we say we have to have a tracking system which works underwater?

"If there are only two or three places like this in the season, then maybe it's better to have the boat and the diver and know they can be safe this way. You can't be prepared for every single thing that can happen in the world.

"We can talk about this – and this is not a cost thing, safety comes far ahead of cost – but we have to be reasonable and look at how many times something like this can happen."

Originally on Autosport.com