Mads Østberg out two stages into Leg 2

Mads Østberg/Ole Kristian Unnerud were well-placed in their Subaru WRC S10 after Leg 1 on Friday and continued to progress towards the top ten on Saturday morning.  It all went wrong on SS10 Terningmoen. Mads came last on the stage and tumbled to 29th place overall. 

Østberg was the third car out, on the deeply snow-covered and twisty road of SS 10 Terningmoen.  “We went wide, planted the car in the snow and there was obviously a rock there.” the Norwegian youngster explained.  When he finally got clear of the snow bank fifteen minutes later, the car could no more than crawl, with steering on one wheel only.

“We had to stop several times to keep the damaged parts of the car taped up.  It’s such a pity.  Out and out bad luck,” added a downhearted Mads.

He is out of the rest of Leg 2 now after arriving at Service D too late, and is hoping for a better day tomorrow.  The team are addressing the problems on the car.

“The goal was a good result, of course.  We can forget that, but I’m not giving up.  I will drive as best I can and see what happens.  It’s not over yet,” said Mads.

Co-driver Ole K. Kunnerud is not bitter and is looking forward to getting back in the car. ”I think this is fantastic fun, regardless,  It went well yesterday and we got good times.  We were lucky then and we were actually lucky that we had the equipment in the car to temporarily repair the damage, because otherwise we would have had to pull out of the whole event,” he said.