Unfortunately, just as Gelvez was finding his rhythm, disaster struck. Approximately 3km after the start of SS12 he entered a slow left hairpin, lost control of the rear of the car, skidded and slipped into a ditch. His Mitsubishi survived the incident relatively unscathed, but he was a prisoner to the Finnish ruts and unable to get back on track.

That said, Gelvez’ll be back out on the stages tomorrow morning and ready to get more vital kilometres of experience under his belt: ”I’m looking forward to restarting tomorrow morning. My target is to get through all of tomorrow’s Special Stages without any troubles and work on my driving technique ready for the future.”

Meanwhile, Fessman had a steady and uneventful day, learning the Finnish stages and practising his driving technique. He was pleased to have completed 193 competitive kilometres of Rally Finland unperturbed and is looking forward to another hard but enjoyable day tomorrow: ”I’m feeling more confident about tomorrow. I’m trying to get more and more experience of the Finnish roads by taking care of the car and focusing on getting to the finish.”

Team Manager Bruno De Pianto was disappointed that Gelvez was unable to continue after such a promising start to the day, but overall pleased with the performance of the two drivers: ”Finland is a really tough rally and lots of drivers in the field fell foul of the tricky stages today. I’m really pleased Carlos made it through without any troubles and with the condition of both the cars at the end of the day. I’m sorry for Alex, but I could see this morning that he was already learning and improving a lot. They are great ambassadors for Venezuela and I hope that tomorrow will be another positive day for them and the team.”