In the sight of their horrible engine blow we met Giovanni Bernacchini, Nasser Al Attiyah’s experienced and talented co-driver and asked him about what happened with their car and how will their season unfold after 2 SWRC events without scoring any point.
Giovanni tell us what happened with the car especially that it broke right in front of us.
Unfortunately we have broken the engine. We already had problems yesterday afternoon. We thought it was a small problem especially that it started to cut. We arrived at the finish and the 45 minutes services yesterday. We thought we solved the problem since we changed the starter the fire plugs. Everything was looking good, especially in the morning the engine’s sound was good.
Maybe the problem we had yesterday was bigger than we thought, because right from the start the engine was not working well.
So it was not only a problem with the sparks?
Honestly we don’t know exactly. The engine is broken, some piston was blown. But we are sure that the problem is coming from yesterday.
Does this problem has anything to do with the fact that the car did Mexico and Portugal, 2 difficult rallies, before coming here?
Yes the car did both Portugal and Mexico but the engine was brand new from Portugal. In Portugal it did some hard training. You never know sometimes the engine would break down even if it is completely brand new. The problem is that we were doing a very good rally.
– You were leading the S2000 and 8th overall before the problem yesterday –
We were doing a great rally on S2000. We were 2 min ahead of second place and honestly we were beating world rally cars. It was very good performance for us. We were also 10 minutes ahead in MERC. We had a great weekend. Our aim today was to finish the stages and take the car home.
Two SWRC events without points, isn’t it becoming harder for you in the championship?
Yes it is very hard, but the good thing is that we showed in Mexico that we were also very competitive. This means that we can do a very good job, but Mexico was a very shameful thing without tube valve. Here we had 25 points in the basket but the engine broke.
Yes it is very hard but again the good thing is that we are very competitive. We don’t know if we can still win the championship but we can push.
We have to keep going and never give up.
