Watch A WRC Car Bizarrely Lose Its Wing Mid-Stage

Modern WRC cars are as fast as top-flight rally machinery has ever been, and a big part of that is down to aerodynamics. You need only look at the complicated array of wings, fins, vents and splitters that adorn the modern breed of Rally1 cars from Toyota, Hyundai and Ford to see how seriously teams take aero these days – they look only one step removed from the kind of cars that run at Pikes Peak.

That said, it seems that you can get away with removing at least some of that aero without it affecting things too badly. Just ask Latvian driver Mārtiņš Sesks, who’s running a partial campaign for the M-Sport team this year, in a non-hybrid version of its Ford Puma.

During this weekend’s Rally Chile, Sesks was rocketing along a high-speed section of one of the rally’s tough gravel stages when the rear wing sheared clean off his Puma, moments before it launched off a jump.

The car appeared to nosedive as it got airborne – perhaps a result of the sudden loss of downforce at the rear – but regardless, Sesks didn’t seem to notice much of a difference. When he reached the end of the stage, where drivers typically give a quick interview, he was asked about what it was like trying to drive without the wing.

“What?” Was Sesks’ shocked reply. He may have noticed a slight difference, saying “That’s why we were now braking…” before tailing off, but all in all, it seems he was blissfully unaware that anything was amiss with his car. Either way, it was a meme-worthy moment, as quickly proven by DirtFish’s Instagram account.

As a result of tyre damage sustained on the first day, Sesks and his co-driver Renārs Francis, who are making their top-flight WRC debut this season, would ultimately only manage 24th in a rally won by Finnish Toyota superstar Kalle Rovanperä.