The video below is footage shot from a camera on-board Ott Tanak’s modified Ford Fiesta of the moment an it and crashed into a lake at the Rally of Mexico.
The footage shows the vehicle leaving the road on the second day of the Guanajuato-based race, sliding down a deep embankment and into the water.
Miraculously, Ott Tanak and his co-driver Raigo Molder managed to un-strap their racing belts and escape through the door just as water flooded into the vehicle on Friday.
They swam to safety to the cheers of on-lookers.
In the footage, we see Molder holding on to his racing pace-notes throughout the ordeal, returning them safely to dry land.
The car rapidly filled up with water and was submerged for 10 hours
Engineers rebuilt the car’s flooded parts, drained the engine and installed a new fuel tank, turbo, gearbox, electronic components and a myriad of other smaller parts.
And just as miraculous as their escape, after three hours of hard work by M-Sport mechanics, the Ford Fiesta sparked back to life and returned to the track in time for day three.
Praising his M-Sport colleagues on their lightening-speed repairs, Tanak said:
“This is something that we have never seen before.
“The car has been gone all day, submerged at the bottom of a lake, full of water, and the team had to do a full rebuild in just three hours.”
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