Mads Ostberg’s Adapta team have withdrawn their Deutschland Rally entry, citing problems on the recent ERC Rally Rzeszow with their R5 car, which was to be used again in Germany.
The team statement said:
Mads Østberg and Swedish co-driver Patrick Barth led the rally in Poland after a few stages, but then had a scary moment when the power steering broke without warning on a fast stretch of a stage. The team didn’t manage to solve the problems with the steering and Mads had no other choice than to withdraw from the event.
"It was scary because it happened suddenly when we went into a very fast corner. Without the power assistance the steering effectively became almost locked, and I just about managed to wrestle the the car through the corner at nearly 180 km/h. We didn`t manage to fix the steering and had to withdraw,” Mads said.
Mads was fastest on several stages in Poland, but the team was not able to solve the technical issues and decided to retire. This is also the reason why Mads is not running in Germany.
The Adapta team driver added:
"Our R5-car is an older version, actually two generations older than the current versions running in WRC2. We can update mechanicals, but there will be issues with the software that we can`t change on such short notice.
“We cannot control 100 percent that this will not happen again, until we have further updates. We have chosen not to start in Germany.”
Mads is in a process finding a new permanent co-driver, and Rally Germany was originally part of that. Torstein Eriksen did the co-driving duties in Rally Finland, while Patrick Barth partnered Mads in Poland.
Then it was planned that Emil Axelsson from Sweden would sit beside him in Germany.
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