Joni Wiman and Liam Doran offer differing opinions of semi-final clash

 

Joni Wiman and Liam Doran didn’t see eye-to-eye following their semi-final clash which led to Wiman rolling over and retiring from the weekend.

Wiman was left hung out to dry at the first turn, with Andreas Bakkerud and Liam Doran moving into the leading spots, while the third Audi of Krisztian Szabo hit Wiman hard from behind.

Wiman and Doran then made contact entering the dirt section and then after the jump Wiman looked to capitalise on a skirmish between Doran and Janis Baumanis to get past the Brit at turn five. While looking up the inside of Doran, Wiman made contact with the Audi driver and the wall, pitching his Hyundai into a roll.

“I don’t think it was bad luck,” Wiman said. “I think first of all the Audis were scared for me because they played me completely out in turn one and then there was a clear gap with Liam and the wall, I went there and he just turned straight into me and that’s why I rolled. So I’m definitely not happy with how the Audis did first corner.”

When asked about Wiman’s view of the incident, Doran responded by saying that Wiman shouldn’t have gone for the move because the space to pull it off wasn’t there.

“Something very similar happened to me in ARX last year when Chris Atkinson was inside me and hit the tyres and rolled over,” Doran recalled. “It’s one of those things. I had the racing line and turned into the racing line, and the fact that he put his car inside that gap … these cars go very fast … I’m in front, I’ve got the racing line, I turn into the apex, he must have known that was what I was going to do.”

“He wasn’t inside me because obviously I wouldn’t have been able to turn in. He braked a little bit later than me and stuffed it in there, what did he think was going to happen? He can’t possibly point the finger at me. The way I see it is he took a risk and I didn’t leave a gap. He was hoping that I was going to run wide or whatever and I didn’t.”

Although the roll ended his day, Wiman felt that he could have achieved a much stronger result had his Saturday gone better.

“It felt really good today, before was good,” the 2014 Global Rallycross champion said. “I could’ve won it without the big mistake in the joker, so I was really confident going into the semis, but obviously everything reflects on Saturday which is bad, that’s why you can’t get the inside lines for the semis.”