Latvia – Vincent Landais: “We will miss practicing high-speed specials”

How are you after your Polish misadventure?

I came back with a whiplash. It would have been impossible to compete in the event and in any case the FIA ​​had taken away my license. Once in France, I immediately went to repeat the exams to be sure that nothing had been forgotten. It's a region of the body where you don't want to let anything slip through. In this profession, we still take some chestnuts and I don't want to wake up with after-effects. My license was revalidated and a few days ago, I had an appointment with my osteopath to further refine my preparation. This made it possible to recheck everything, to see how the body had absorbed and evacuated the shock and I am 100%. 

How do you view the incident?

There was a lot of bad luck. The timing was very unfavorable. This was the only blind corner behind a bump where you didn't have to stop to discuss the grade of a previous curve. We took our time, we restarted quietly and the car was there. This happened to us, but it could have happened to Takamoto Katsuta who showed up after us.

What experience do you have in Latvia?

I already went there in 2014 and 2015 when it was in ERC. However, the event was held in winter and there was therefore snow. This was my first race outside of France and Switzerland, but my memories are vague. Sportingly, it was not memorable. In 2014, with Robert Consani we had a lot of mechanical problems on our 207 S2000. The following year, with Jonathan Hirschi, we went out from the first special…

What type of route should you expect?

It's going to be like Poland, but with a lot more chicanes. The average should fall. With Sébastien, we will have to find out. The event was in the ERC in recent years and so there are videos which allowed us to get an idea, but it was still with Rally2s.

What does the speed of the special stages impose on you in your work as a co-driver?

When there is a turn and a long reach behind, it is not very complicated. It becomes a little more so if everything happens very quickly. It's better to be a little ahead in the grades. As we have not played Poland, this will be the first time that I have played this type of rally with Seb. I'll see what this will do. The advantage of this test is that it is new for almost everyone. We know that it will go away very quickly and we will perhaps miss this practice of high speed specials since we did not race in Poland.

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