Motorsport: No luck for Tapper in Italy

New Zealand driver Mark Tapper was forced to retire from this weekend's Rally of Italy because of a recurring car fault.

Driving a Ralliart Italia team-prepared Mitsubishi, Tapper and co-driver Jeff Judd contested only two of the three days of the rally, held on the island of Sardinia.

"The car was cutting out completely with a fuel starvation problem.

"We were asked to try and make it back to the service park by the team, but eventually the car stopped totally on the road section after the third stage," Tapper said.

Re-starting Saturday morning, Tapper set third fastest time in the production world rally championship (P-WRC) field, 17th outright and less than a minute behind eventual rally winner Jari-Matti Latvala in a works Ford Focus.

"We still suffered from the same problem in the slow corners but the stage had very few of them. I guess this shows that with a good car we will be on the pace."

Tapper struck trouble again in the next twisty stage with the engine cutting out on a corner which sent the car spinning into a rock damaging the radiator.

Tapper then retired because the cut-out problem was becoming dangerous.

"It was only a matter of time before it would end up in another accident for us."

Tapper will now spend two weeks in Cyprus training and acclimatising to the heat expected at the next round in Greece from June 10-14.

- NZPA