Kalle Rovanperä had to dodge cows on the fourth special stage of the World Rally Championship in Sardinia.
Finnish driver of Toyota driving in the World Rally Championship Kalle Rovanperä experienced a terrible surprise at the fourth special stage of the World Rally Championship in Sardinia. Rovanperä had to make a quick evasive move when there were cows on the road. A dramatic situation occurred in the early stages of the long Monte Lerno special test.
– There were cows on the road at three kilometers. There were three cows on the road, two of them right in the middle of the road. I ducked into a ditch, but sure enough I hit two cows. I still drove to the gravel, Rovanperä said on the DirtFish rally site.
– We had bad luck with the cows, but we were lucky that nothing broke. It was a super difficult special test, dry and incredibly loose gravel, Rovanperä recounted his tough moments.
“It was really about”
Sports expert Henri Haapamäki emphasized that Rovanperä was lucky in the situation in many different ways.
– It was quite lucky that we were driving a gentle curve that turned to the right. Kalle was quite lucky that he was able to go around the outside without major damage to the car, Haapamäki commented on the most dramatic moment of the morning’s leg.
It could have been worse.
– If there had been a narrow place, the options would have been to hit a cow or destroy the car by driving out. Or if something like this had happened on a really high-speed section, it wouldn’t have been possible to make any corrections. It could be really fatal to hit an obstacle weighing hundreds of kilograms. So it was really the case, Haapamäki estimated.
Such events are fortunately rare, but not completely unusual.
– Over the years, there have been quite bad hits on various animals. For example, there have been bad reindeer crashes in the Finnish Tunturiralli, but such cases are quite rare. Fortunately, the sounds of helicopters scare the living creatures of the forest nowadays, Haapamäki said.