Video: is this the craziest end to a rally ever?

Entering the final stage of last weekend’s Rally Mexico with a 37.2-second lead, all Kris Meeke had to do to secure his fourth World Rally Championship win was get his Citroen C3 across the line. Simple, right? Well, this is rallying – nothing is ever simple.

With two corners and less than a kilometre of the 21.94km stage around Derramadero left, Kris went into a crested right-hander too hot, sending him spearing off the road, through a bush and into a car park as more than a few shouts of ‘sacré bleu!’ rang out at Citroen base camp.

Disorientated and having biffed the rear end of a helpless VW Passat, Kris then decided to do a lap of the car park in some sort of dusty car park gymkhana. Having navigated his way around some parked cars, he located a C3-sized gap in the hedgerow and punctured his car through the shrubbery, and then back onto the road to cross the line. He finished with a 13.8 second lead over Ford’s Sebastien Ogier.

So it turns out the WRC didn’t need to re-write the rulebook to try and add drama to this season’s championship. All it needed was a dusty car park and a lost Northern Irish rallyist to spice it up.

Either way, top job, Kris.