VIDEO: Huge crashes in WRC! Championship leader wrecks his Toyota, Breen ends up on the roof, Neuville has a shock

The World Rally Championship (WRC) continued this weekend with its ninth event of the season, namely the Belgian Ypres Rally. However, in addition to some great driving, the rally also featured several crashes, the most serious of which was suffered by Kalle Rovanperä in the WRC category.

The Belgian Ypres Rally was dominated by Ott Tänak, who took his second victory in a row after his Finnish victory. The 2019 World Champion was joined on the podium by Elfyn Evans and Esapekka Lappi.

However, in addition to great drives and beautiful stages, the ninth round of this year’s WRC season also offered some hard crashes. You can see the Rovanpera crash for yourself in the video below.

Rovanperä suffered this accident on the first stage and had no chance to fight for the top positions in the Belgian round.

After the opening stage, the Belgian rally was led by home rider Thierry Neuville, but even he could not bring his car to the finish line successfully. In fact, he failed to negotiate one of the corners on Saturday’s stage and the accident put him out of the running.

Neuville made this driving error on stage 15, a time when he led the Ypres Rally by 16 seconds. Needless to say, it’s endings like that in a domestic event that hurt the most. Despite his drives and the course of the Belgian rally, his retirement was all the more shocking.

However, that wasn’t all in terms of crashes, another dangerous crash was caused by Craig Breen, who flipped his Ford on its roof on stage 10.

Adrien Formaux, Craig Breen’s teammate, then caused the fourth crash in the WRC Royal Class.

After Neuville (Hyundai) did not continue in the Belgian Ypres Rally, Elfyn Evans (Toyota) took over the lead and scored two stage wins on Sunday morning. But then Tänak (Hyundai) took the lead and eventually drove to overall victory.

Evans, however, was only five seconds behind Tänak at the finish of this race. However, the huge gap grew between second and third place. Lappi lost 1 minute and 41.6 seconds to second-placed Evans.

So what did the Belgian rally do to the World Championship standings? The championship is still led by Rovanperä (203 points), who has a significant lead over second-placed Tänak (131 points).

Evans is in third place with 116 points, ten points less than Neuville. Toyota Gazoo Racing leads the Constructors’ Cup with 381 points, followed by Hyundai Shell Mobis WRT with 88 points. M-Sport Ford is currently third with 188 points.

Sources