WRC Race Car Goes Off Course and Still Manages to Win the Race

Citroën’s Kris Meeke decided to take a stroll through a parking lot.

In the world of motorsports, the World Rally Championship reigns supreme as the event with the most unbelievable crashes and saves. While I don’t want to diminish touring car racing’s ability to mix it up or Formula 1’s high-speed, explosive launching of cars, WRC is the only sport that routinely has drivers flying off the track and through obstacles only to return and finish the race — often missing a tire and half of their vehicle’s bodywork.

On the final stage of Rally Mexico, Citroën’s Kris Meeke hit an unexpected bump and took a Sunday drive off the course and into a parking lot, destroying the rear end of a Volkswagen in the process. After avoiding a group of bystanders, he then proceeded to fling the car around some of the most willy-nilly parking I’ve ever seen, return to the track, and win the race by a sizable margin.

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Thankfully, the VW CC clipped by the Citroën C3 was one of only a handful of cars that seemed to be parked correctly. Had it been left even a foot to the right, Meeke and co-driver Paul Nagle would have found themselves inside the trunk. After the race, Meeke announced to television cameras, “I’m a lucky boy. I’m a lucky, lucky, boy.”

Luck had nothing to do with the fancy footwork after going off course, though. Even after that major setback and puncturing a tire, the C3 finished 13.8 seconds ahead of WRC legend Sébastien Ogier. The two men had no idea. After crossing the finish line, an understandably flustered Nagle told Meeke “We lost it,” before seeing their official posted time.

Although, let’s not kid ourselves, Sébastien will probably still take the championship for a fifth consecutive year.