Kris Meeke has been abruptly and rather embarrassingly dropped by the Citroen Racing World Rally Team, which according to the team is due to ‘an excessively high number of crashes’. Thus, the British rally driver will not compete for Citroen beginning the 2018 Rally Italia Sardegna. Citroen WRT will retain the Craig Breen/Scott Martin and Mads Ostberg/Torstein Eriksen C3 WRC teams.

Pierre Budar, Citroen team principal said, “This wasn’t an easy decision to make because it effects a driver and a co-driver, but it is largely founded on safety issues which come under my preoccupations as Team Principal. We have consequently chosen to make this decision as a preventive measure.”

In the previous Rally of Portugal, Kris Meeke suffered a heavy crash in the C3 WRC where he even had to be airlifted to the hospital for a check-up. The other time when he was in a crash that led to a retirement was during Rally Sweden.