Car Goes FLYING! Rallycross Under Floodlights | From the Vault | Abu Dhabi 2019

You can see they can see a clear path down, I always feel Marklund and Doran, you can see in P3 and P5, tricky for them to find a way through. The Peugeots have brilliant starts all weekend, but this is the most crucial one of all, the revs are up, here we go, semi-final time. Hansen with a great start, Marklund too, Hansen moves across, going to try and push Scheider out wide. No contact so far, Nitish managed to get past, Doran's gone backwards. Doran, Nitish round the outside, going to get P3, Scheider, oh! Massive! Over the fire is off, Nitish launched over the kerb, landed on the roof of Anton Marklund, and has taken, has damaged the roof and taken the rear wing off the car. Kevin Hansen leads, where has that car parked? It's parked round the outside of Turn 1, so I think this race will continue. Smoke from the back of Scheider's car as well, so maybe damage to the bodywork. We were super worried about those orange kerbs all weekend, and it just goes to show why, you know, those first couple of tussles in the corner, just, you get caught up in it and got massive, you can see massive damage on the back of Marklund's car. Literally, he had, Nitish's car was on top of the car, but there we go, this is the way it is. So, Marklund goes Joker 1, so Marklund's gone Joker 1, there's no rear wing on that car as well, and bear in mind, obviously, with the high-speed stuff here, that's going to affect the handling for him. Timo Scheider in P2, Liam Doran is in P3, Kevin Hansen out front, you can see Scheider. Scheider's been moving this car around quite a lot all weekend. Yeah, there's been a lot of movement on the car, smoke pouring off the back, maybe some contact. Some bodywork, so you can see the rear, the bodywork is underneath, Nitish is out, that's a great shame, he's only going to do a few events this year from the South of Italy, we're really disappointed about that. Kevin Hansen, meanwhile, leading only Marklund as Joker so far. Yeah, fantastic job by Kevin here, you know, he's pulled a margin to Timo Scheider of 0.8 already, and he's just keeping his head down and keeping it focused, he knows he's got a job in hand to do, and he's doing it perfectly. He is indeed, that's that section of the track which isn't quite so well lit, which we really like, because you get to see anti-lag on it. Kevin on the brakes, into the left and then the right. So yeah, the lights are focused very much on the F1 circuit, as you can see here, it's literally, Dan, it's like daylight. Yeah, it's fantastic lighting, and hopefully it's not too distracting for these guys. I can't imagine what it's going to be like sat in the car, and I just hope that, you know, the fog lights aren't too dazzling. So Marklund is on in 7.1 to his watch, just about three seconds off the back of Timo Scheider. I think, how much damage Marklund's carrying, whether or not I can see the rear wing hanging off the car, there's Nitish who climbed onto the top of it. Kevin out front, no problem, but Timo Scheider's going with him. Yeah, Timo's going with him, and he's keeping up well. They're pulling the gap back to Doran as well, so they're both dragging themselves through. Neither of these guys in this position, they know one car's out, they'll have seen it at the side of the road probably. They're probably not going to joke, are they, until the last lap? No, it reduces the element of risk. Oh, as we've just seen from the commentary position, big slide from Marklund as he's struggling about the rear wing. But no, these two guys are going to hang on until the last lap. It's going to reduce the risk of making a mistake on the Joker lap. And also, you know, they're not being held up. They can just put their head down and do their own speed. Yeah, exactly, keep it tight. And Hansen to beat Kevin Hansen in the final qualifying session, moving the car around a bit more than normal. Nice to see, and he did the fastest time of the weekend. So look at this again, a little bit of handbrake rotates the car around. They've got a couple of laps left to go. As I say, I think they'll wait, I think Scheider will too. So Scheider's on the pace here. Look where the dust flies out. You can see some sparks in the background. Who's gone Joker? It's Tim Asjarnov. Tim Asjarnov goes Joker. So he was up in the back of Liam Moore, and you can see there was 0.6 of a second in it. So Timmer now needs to get the hammer down, see if he can find a bit of time. He comes out in front of Anton Marklund. Look at the rear of Marklund's car. It's very, very loose. And Dan, that could be geometry, but it could also be the missing aero. Yeah, I mean, I know I've spoke to Prodrive in the past, and they've done a lot of work with the aero on the car to get the rear grip. So Marklund continues at the back of the pack with a pretty heavily damaged car. Kevin Hansen continues out front with Scheider just one second off the back of him. But we're now looking to see Liam Doran. Does Scheider go? Scheider's gone Joker early. Scheider's gone Joker one lap from the end, so he's hoping then that he'll disappear and maybe there'll be a problem for Kevin. Kevin won't be able to see with his mirrors. Liam has gone. Is Tim Asjarnov going to get him? Liam coming round the outside. Timmer up the inside. Liam's going to try and carry the speed into Turn 2. Going to get the undercut on the gas now. He's going to get alongside the Russian. Tim Asjarnov has the inside line into Turn 3. Oh, late on the brakes on the handbrake. Doran up the inside. Great pass, Liam Doran. Oh, gas, gas, gas. Tim Asjarnov trying to get the move back. That was fantastic setup from Liam. Tim Asjarnov has a look in the inside on the way into the chicane. Contact between them. Doran into the right. The Russian is right underneath his rear wing of the i20, but that was teed up from Turn 1 all the way through. Great move, Liam Doran. Perfect racecraft there. He knew that he could just cut himself. Kevin Hansen's gone into joking out last lap as well, so we'll see how he gets on to Scheide. Kevin's going to come down. I'm pretty sure he's going to take it. He does. Kevin Hansen takes semifinal one comfortably. Oh, Scheide hits the wall. Scheide hits the wall. Move up in P3, so that move by Doran. And Markland, hero drive to bring that car home. Markland has come across the line in fifth place. But the move there for me, brilliant racing between Liam Doran and Timo Timmersjärnov. Fair, hard racing. Liam managed to get P3, and that sees him through to the final. I can't remember the last time Liam was in the final of the World Championship. Hockenheim 2016. Yes, Dan Rook, you see? Yes, Dan Rook. Right, Kevin Hansen heading back. Scheide hit the wall pretty hard, didn't he? Came through the left flat out and tapped the wall. So is there any damage to Scheide's car? They've only got a little while to fix it. He's driving back, so maybe not. Result of semifinal one. Kevin Hansen takes it from Timo Scheide and Liam Doran. Timmersjärnov, Markland and Reinis Nittisch go no further this weekend. Okay, wow. Well, that was interesting in turn one. Particularly, I think, if you were Reinis Nittisch or Anton Markland. I feel for Reinis. Bit of a bundle. You can see he's disappointed. Reinis, by the way, is the only previous World Rallycross Championship event winner who was in the semifinals. We are guaranteed a new winner today. Somebody is going to join the list of drivers who have had a win and there are only 12 of them. Here we go. Down towards turn one. Have a look back then. There's a bit of a bundle. Watch for Nittisch on the outside. So Nittisch runs the car a bit wide and then... So the problem is that he hit the kerb side on, not front on, didn't he? Yeah, we can see there a big squeeze from Markland and he obviously had nowhere to go. Couldn't stop and... Oh, yeah, a big, big hit there. So a massive, massive hit in the first corner. Look at Markland driving around with the rear end of the car destroyed. That's mostly bodywork, Dan, isn't it? Because the roll cage is fairly long way down from the rear quarter. Yeah, thankfully, you know, a lot of that's replaceable as well. So always big sideways there, as you can see in the background. This was the fantastic race. Look at Doran. He knows he hasn't got him, so he slots him left, slots him right on the gas. But this is where he's teed him up for the hairpin. If Timmer here had got it stopped a little bit better, OK, we're not going to see it, then he might have been able to hold on to position, but he didn't. So Doran goes through with Scheider. And semifinal one winner, Kevin Hansen.