The Suzuki World Rally Team endured another difficult outing on the Jordan Rally last weekend with
Toni Gardemeister and Per-Gunnar Andersson both failing to finish.
Suzuki's problems began almost immediately with Andersson going off the road in the opening Suwayma 1 test, just 6 kilometres in.
Although his car was completely undamaged and the Swede managed to get the car back on the road himself - having located some pieces of wood to place under the wheels, allowing the car to reverse out of the ditch it had landed in - unfortunately he reached the end of the first stage out of time and was unable to continue.
While he re-joined under the SupeRally on Saturday and then set some good times, including a sixth fastest time in SS15 and a fourth best effort in SS18 on the last day, he went out in the next stage, when he slid off the road.
"This is a really disappointing end to the event for me and for the team. I don't really understand what happened on stage 19 and how I ended up off the road," said P-G. "It had been going well for me. It was very loose, with a lot of gravel on the surface of the road, but we hadn't had a problem.
"We came into a slow left-hand bend, which led into a hairpin right. I had a half-spin after the left, which dropped the front of the car down into the inside of the hairpin. The car went nose in. The rear wheels were still on the road. I put the car in reverse gear straight away, hoping it would reverse out, but the gradient was too steep.
"Jonas [Andersson - my co-driver] and I jumped out of the car to try and get some more people to help us. Only two people were around. We tried to lift the car out, but it was impossible. On the stage before we'd been fourth quickest, and I was really enjoying it."
