A rally driver and his co-pilot had a lucky escape when they miraculously walked away from a huge crash unharmed.
Adrien Fourmaux and co-driver Alexandre Coria suffered a disastrous start to their World Rally Championship (WRC) campaign when they crashed on the third stage of the season opener in Monte Carlo.
Fourmaux appeared to misjudge a corner and crashed into the side of a small cliff, flipping his M-Sport Ford Puma over and off the track.
The car then rolled over the Armco barriers and down the side of a ravine, turning over several times before finally coming to rest around 30 metres down.
Extensive damage was done to the Puma, with pieces of debris scattered across the ravine and one of the doors flying off completely.
Fortunately, both racers inside the car escaped unscathed.
Their hopes of getting off to a strong start in this year's WRC did not fare so well, though, as their Monte Carlo rally appears to be over following the crash.
Fourmaux was fourth in the overall standings and only 18 seconds adrift of leader Sebastien Ogier.
But Richard Millener, team principal at M-Sport, was not optimistic about the team's chances of being able to fix such extensive damage in time for them to take any further part in Monaco.
"He has had a very heavy accident by the looks of things," Millener said after the crash.
"From what I can see it looks like quite a dirty corner he has gone to cut the line and I guess the cars in front have pulled a bit of mud out, and he just went head on into a mountain, and it has just flipped him over the barrier and 20 to 30 meters down the bank.
"The car looks fairly heavily damaged so I suspect that will be the end of the rally for this one which is a real shame.
"It is not what we wanted as we talked about making sure we get to the end, and it is difficult when they feel like they have good confidence and his comments last night about the car last night were very positive and he took that into today.
"It is another hard lesson in the development cycle, there is not much we can do."
