Adrien Fourmaux defends in Ford Puma Hybrid Rally1 / WRC

Grégoire Munster/Louis Louka achieve their best result of the season so far on the Croatian tarmac William Creighton in Ford Fiesta Rally2 shines with five best times in the WRC2 category.

At the Rally Croatia, the M-Sport Ford team experienced an almost perfect weekend with its two Puma Hybrid Rally1 crews: both Adrien Fourmaux and Grégoire Munster showed impressive speed in the fourth of 13 rounds of the World Rally Championship and they kept up the pace. keep a good head on the hard Croatian asphalt roads. The Croatian Rally provided plenty of action and excitement right to the end. The difficult conditions hit some of the top drivers.

Adrien Fourmaux and co-driver Alex Coria wanted to confirm their good form after finishing on the podium twice in a row in Sweden and Kenya and another top result in Croatia – for example with a third podium on three different road surfaces. Fourmaux initially approached this goal cautiously on Friday, before increasing his pace for each special stage (SS) in the afternoon and setting his sights on Ott Tänak, who was ahead of him in fourth place. The Frenchman finished the first stage with the fastest time on stage 8, just beaten by eight-time world champion Sébastien Ogier.

However, the rain clouds gathered in Zagreb announced that Saturday will bring many new challenges. Tire choice was the main topic of conversation in the service park and the team’s meteorologists tried to predict when and where the rain would occur. Fourmaux mainly used soft wet tires for his Puma Hybrid Rally1. Although it remained drier, the 28-year-old maintained his consistent position and set the best time on the 15km long SS 9 at the start of the stage so he continued to put Tänak ahead of him under pressure to finish the second stage in fifth place. A total, which meant that he had previously earned himself eight World Championship points.

At the beginning of the so-called “Super Sunday”, the French immediately set the second fastest time of the special stage and stayed close to the podium places. However, on SS 18, the third-to-last stage of the rally, he hit a track barrier with his front wheel – it ripped off the steering column on the Puma Hybrid Rally1. Fortunately, Fourmaux and Coria had the spare part they needed on board and were able to continue their journey thanks to temporary repairs outside the route. However, considering the damage, the small loss of time of around 15 minutes meant that instead of the general level, the entire concentration was on the final Power Stage. There Fourmaux showed all his skills, distanced himself from all the elites of the world and gained five important bonus points for the fastest time in the World Cup table. With a total of 13 points from Croatia, he is defending third place in the drivers’ standings.

His teammate Grégoire Munster and co-driver Louis Louka also put in a good performance in Croatia, driving a flawless rally and were rewarded with their best result of the season so far. Just like Fourmaux, the Luxembourg-licensed Belgian started on a wait-and-see basis on Friday. After getting more used to the car and track conditions, he set fast times and battled with experienced rivals such as Andreas Mikkelsen and Takamoto Katsuta.

Despite a poor tire choice, Munster remained on the heels of rival Mikkelsen on Saturday. In eighth place at the end of the second stage, the Belgian recorded three World Championship points. On SS 18, which surprised many of the crew – including teammates Fourmaux/Coria – Munster drove his Ford Puma Hybrid Rally1 quickly and in a controlled manner to fifth place in SS. Munster then finished the car without any faults or technical problems and, finishing sixth in “Super Sunday” and seventh overall, scored two more championship points.

“The Croatian rally is never short of drama, and unfortunately that was the case today,” M-Sport team boss Richard Millener begins his summary. “Everything was going well until luck changed on SS 18. It’s a shame that Adrien Fourmaux fell out of the lead, but luckily he and Alex Coria are good mechanics. They calmed down, fixed the car and continued. Because of the new points system, there was and much at stake. Then they left too

followed by this absolutely impressive win on the Power Stage – Adrien has once again proven that he can also win World Championship races. Overall, not a perfect day, but still very good. Grégoire Munster and Louis Louka drove consistently throughout the rally and know how bad the road conditions get when you start later. They implemented this knowledge wisely, improved their speed and continued to close the gap on more experienced opponents. I am very satisfied with the overall performance of our team in Croatia. Now we take this momentum from the last three World Cup meetings with us and we look forward to Portugal.”

“I’m very happy that we finished without any problems,” said the Belgian, concluding his best position of the year so far. “After the season didn’t start the way we wanted, this result can now give us new momentum. I found the rally very different testing that you had to deal with very firmly. We were able to reduce the gap to the competition from 1.5 seconds per kilometer on Friday to 0.5 seconds towards the end of the rally – so everything is going in the right direction.

“Overall, a good weekend for our conference,” says Fourmaux. “We talked to Ott Tänak for two days. We were a little slow, so we tried a different set-up and managed it well on Friday afternoon. Unfortunately, when rain threatened on Saturday, we had to adjust the car’s settings a bit, but when we went back to Friday’s settings, the car felt good We were able to attack properly. Unfortunately, it cost us a lot: in Croatia you have to be perfect. We knew right away that we would go out on the Power Stage my first Power Stage win and extra points as a positive result.” (Ford)