29-year-old Skoda UK driver Guy Wilks is expected to make a full recovery after breaking two vertebrae in his lower back after surviving a high-speed crash in the Rally d'Italia-Sardegna.
Wilks had started seventh on the road but 7kms into SS1, the Fabia left the road at a high-speed section of road. The car went down a slope, hitting a large boulder & launching the car into the air. The car then landed & went through some rocky undergrowth. The car came to a rest 40 metres from the road.
Wilks extracted himself from the car on his own & then lay down on the ground to try & relieve his back pain. Navigator Phil Pugh was OK & preceeded to phone the service pack to summon the emergency services. A helicopter then arrived to airlift Wilks to Oristano, where he was then transferred to the San Martino hospital.
“We had a game plan to make the most of our good road position and push hard from the start. We arrived at an almost flat out left hand corner about seven kilometres into the stage and the pace note was wrong and we left the road at high speed.
“It’s just one of those things and part of rallying. Perhaps if we weren’t pushing so hard we might have got away with it, but that’s a very big might. Everything felt so right. The car felt good, Phil was doing a great job on the notes and there was no reason not to push. It was a wrong pace note that ultimately caught us out, and it doesn’t matter how well we were going up until then.
“I’m very annoyed to be lying in a hospital bed and looking at a hospital ceiling, and it’s massively frustrating to be injured and not out there competing. It’s a missed opportunity to score a good result and take home points – I know that, and I’m sorry for the team and everyone involved in the programme. But we’ll be back to fight another day.” Wilks commented
Medical checks carried out on Wilks showed that he had broken his first & second lumbar vertebra, but showed no signs of compression or any other injuries.
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