Solberg agreed with his former Hyundai team-mate, having suffered with water ingress through the air vent into the cockpit of his Toyota.
“[It was] absolutely crazy,” Solberg told DirtFish. “If you think Africa was dangerous, yeah, this was mad dangerous. You do 200 kilometers an hour, full of water in the car, wipers are full, you see nothing, absolutely nothing from the start.
“And I spoke to the guys on the stage, and they said there was rain before, but when I arrived, it was heavens open. It was completely different. And Elliott [Edmondson, co-driver] said, there is no chance you can go faster. I was flat on the straights, had no clue where I was, and still I lost a minute, yeah? So it’s just, that was a little bit unsafe. It was a bit stupid.”
M-Sport’s Josh McErlean told DirtFish his co-driver, Eoin Treacy, said during the stage “the thought the red flag would come on because the visibility was nil.
When told Neuville and Solberg both felt it was too dangerous, McErlean agreed: “Yeah, for me, it was definitely too dangerous. Whenever you actually can’t see, then there’s a problem. But anyway, if we hadn’t had this selfie stick [to clear the windshield], then we would have had to stop for sure and lost a lot more time, but yeah. It got better from there.”