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No excuses as ERC Junior returnee Hokkanen suffers double blow

Miika Hokkanen praised his new team Mavisa Sport and new co-driver Rami Suorsa following Rally Islas Canarias – but then labelled his own performance on this return to FIA ERC3 Junior Championship action as “very bad”.

Forced to sit out the Azores Rallye season opener to recover from shoulder surgery, the former Finnish 2WD champion had high hopes of a strong start to his second season in the Pirelli-supported category.

While a double puncture caused his exit on day one, Hokkanen admitted that his restart on leg two wasn’t as good as it should have been.

“I’m just sad I was very bad this weekend,” said Hokkanen, a double ERC3 Junior podium finisher in 2018. “Sometimes it is what it is but I don’t see the fact I don’t have much experience on Tarmac as an excuse. I should have been much better this weekend but it didn’t work out this way. I’m sure it can’t go worse than this.”

Of his Friday exit, Hokkanen explained what had gone wrong: “In the second stage we clipped a bit the inside of some house and it broke the right rear tyre. We drive the whole stage with the puncture. After the stage we changed the tyre and then in the road section some metal piece got through the rubber and we lost another tyre. After that we needed to retire because we only had one spare. I have never got a puncture in a road section before so it’s very bad luck.”

Zdroj: fiaerc.com