M-Sport’s double retirement from Saturday’s leg of Rally del Paraguay is “incredibly frustrating” and “quite deflating”, says team principal Richard Millener.
Josh McErlean had been seventh overall but was forced to retire ahead of the second stage of day two as he discovered a step in the road on the previous test had sheared some bolts on the sump guard and allowed the engine’s oil to escape.
One stage later, team-mate Grégoire Munster was also forced out with a similar problem, although he had been experiencing issues with a damaged starter motor too.
Millener told DirtFish he is “almost certain” the same section of the Carmen del Paraná stage caused both the team’s Ford Puma Rally1s to retire.
“We think it’s one piece of bedrock on a heavy braking into a chicane that’s caused both cars to have the same issue,” he said. “So it’s one of those things that you learn as you go to the rally, but when it happens to your team in both cars it’s incredibly frustrating and quite deflating – especially after yesterday for Josh.”
Millener admits M-Sport may have got its setup wrong for the Saturday stages
Millener absolved his drivers of any blame for what happened.
He explained: “It will be interesting to have a look at the in-car from all the other drivers to see if they approach the braking differently to the way our guys have. And then maybe the more experienced guys can read this and know that when you’re braking heavily, the front of the car’s coming down. If there’s a bad piece of bedrock, you maybe drive slightly differently to avoid the impact.
“But honestly, I think looking at the in-car, our guys did nothing wrong, from what I would say, at all. Maybe it’s just a little bit of experience there, but we’ll have to look. But at the same time, there’s obviously some setup we’re missing that’s protecting us from these really, really big impacts.
“Maybe we haven’t got it 100% as we hoped but we have no experience with this event either, so it’s a hard lesson learned here.”
Millener appeared confident that both McErlean and Munster would be able to rejoin the rally on Sunday, but the team would need to have a more in-depth look at Munster’s engine given he did an extra stage than McErlean.
McErlean had been producing one of his best performances of the year before he was left stranded
“It’s just super disappointing for the team,” Millener added. “We’ve said it many times, it’s really hard to compete against these other guys and we’re kind of in our own fights on every rally and we’re doing the best we can.
“It’s hard when you keep getting a couple of punches in the stomach when you’re trying to do your best and these things kind of happen, but the good times come back and Malcolm’s been there before, we’ve been there before and you just have to keep going and keep going and keep going and not let it knock you too much. But on the day that it happens, it’s pretty hard.”
