Panizzi: The impact was very heavy on my side.

Mitsubishi's Gilles Panizzi has admitted that he 'cannot remember exactly' how he crashed in stage nine this morning, which kicked off leg two of the Rallye Deutschland, and led to the first stage of the day being cancelled.

Speaking following a check-up at a local hospital, the Frenchman added though that it wasn't all-bad, and that on the 'positive side' at least they showed the Lancer WRC04 is good on asphalt.

"I cannot remember exactly how it all happened but it was raining incredibly heavily in the stage," said Gilles. "I was on the brakes and maybe we went a little too close to the side of the road and onto some wet grass. At that point we became passengers, the car was uncontrollable on such a surface.

"We hit a small tree which then spun us 200/300 metres downhill through a field until we hit another tree and stopped. The impact was very heavy on my side, but the car stood up to it well, the seat didn't move and we have both walked away from it just sore and bruised.

"It was bad luck for us, but on the positive side we showed the tarmac potential of the car and demonstrated that we are moving in the right direction."

Technical director Mario Fornaris was just glad Panizzi wasn't injured, as initial reports suggested he might have broken his left arm.

"We have had bad luck in this rally and although we have now lost three cars in the last two events, it doesn't affect the next steps we will take to further develop the car for next year. The important things are that neither crew was hurt, the engineers have done a great job in developing such a safe and strong car, we showed our asphalt potential and proved the focus of the development is correct," he concluded.

"Technically we have not had any major problems in the last couple of rallies, so we have definitely improved reliability, and speed, enough to have fulfilled our original target of being placed in the top six by this point in the season."

Team-mates Daniel Sola and Xavier Amigo meanwhile retired on Friday, after a similar incident. They were unable to re-start this morning under the SupeRally regulations, as the car was too badly damaged.