Munster, Pajari and Katsuta crash out of WRC Rallye Monte Carlo

Munster, Pajari and Katsuta crash out of WRC Rallye Monte Carlo

26th January 2025 0 By Kamron Kent

M-Sport Ford’s Gregoire Munster and Toyota’s Takamoto Katsuta and Sami Pajari have crashed out of the World Rally Championship’s Rallye Monte Carlo, on the final day.

Feature image credit: Jaanus Ree / Red Bull Content Pool

Only the wolf power stage remains on this season’s curtain raiser at the Rallye Monte Carlo with a total of 17.92km of terrain left to complete. Ogier remains the rally leader since the Monte master took the lead on Friday, ahead of teammate Elfyn Evans and Hyundai’s Adrien Fourmaux. 

In the opening two stages of the morning, Ogier extended his lead over Evans at the 16th stage, Avancon/Notre-Dame du Laus 2, increasing it to 24.3 seconds. However, the Frenchman saw his lead drop to 18.2 seconds over his fellow teammate at the end of the next stage, Digne-les-Bains/Chaudon-Norante 2.

However, the same could not be said for his fellow teammates Sami Pajari and Takamoto Katsuta. Katsuta understeered 1.8km into the opening stage of the day, SS16, and buried his Yaris Rally1 into a bush. Despite his and the local fans’ attempts to dislodge the Yaris, Katsuta was stuck. 

Pajari was the next to falter on the same stage as he overshot his braking point, before a bridge, and ended up in a ravine 10.1km into the stage. Thankfully both Toyota crews were okay in their incidents. 

M-Sport Ford’s Gregoire Munster was the next to have Monte-Carlo trouble, after a mixed weekend of ups and downs. The Luxembourg driver understeered, heavily, into a grass bank 11.8km into the stage.  The contact rotated his Rally1 Puma back across the road before stopping. 

Fortunately, both Munster and Louis Louka were okay following the incident. 

The Wolf Power Stage, La Bollene-Vesubie/Peira-Cava, is the last stage to be run this weekend and the first car is expected to head out onto the stage at 12:15pm local time.

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CategoryNews Rallying WRC

About the author

Hi, I'm Kamron. I created ApexMotorsports.co.uk in the dying embers of the 2021 Formula 1 world championship. It allowed me freedom to write whatever I wanted to write about which was all things motorsports, my passion. I have put a lot of effort in over the years to keep this website in its best shape and I've loved seeing the brand grow consistently, month-on-month, year-on-year. My ambition is to keep watching this brand grow into a primary outlet of news for all things motorsports whilst fueling my desire to pursue a career in sports journalism, specialising in motorsports.

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