The result didn’t suggest so, but in his own words it was “still a really positive start to the season.”
Nobody tipped Jon Armstrong to be third overall after two stages of the 2026 World Rally Championship, yet that’s exactly where the Irishman placed his M-Sport Ford Puma Rally1 at the end of a bonkers stage two in Monte Carlo.
That set him up for a top-six finish on his top-class debut and first start on the Monte, but then the penultimate stage happened.
Slushy corner, understeer, big hit, broken steering, broken brake disc, out of the rally.
“It’s a lesson learned,” Armstrong told DirtFish. “The whole start of the stage had melted and between the RNC going through and us going through it, it melted even more than what they had seen.
“I think a lot of the information had changed at the start of the stage where it was mostly Tarmac. It’s one of those scenarios where if everything’s now Tarmac, you have to take a wee bit of caution when you hear [the co-driver call] slush or snow. It just shows you when you get to the one place where it’s still hanging about or it’s really bad that you either get away with it or you don’t. In that scenario, we didn’t get away with it.
Armstrong was caught out on SS16 of 17 last month
“The car just aquaplaned and it was a very narrow place, there was no real opportunity to recover once the front washed out. I’m obviously gutted for everyone involved, to lose what would have been a strong result just because of something that I’ve done. It’s frustrating but I think there’s been a lot of positives out of it as well.”
His stock is certainly higher than it was before the rally, where nobody – not even Armstrong himself – knew what to expect from the 31-year-old. But it also provided him with one clear action point to improve.
The weakness to address
What perhaps wasn’t so well televised is the fact Armstrong and co-driver Shane Byrne did actually get the car to the end of the stage they crashed on, they just ran out of time.
It’s to their credit that they succeeded in that regard, but is it really a success if their efforts proved futile?
The Monte Carlo Rally is unique in the conditions it presents (particularly this year), but fixing the car as quickly as possible is relevant everywhere. Armstrong recognizes this as his biggest learning going forward.
“This is an area I’ve spoken to Rich [Millener, M-Sport team principal] about,” said Armstrong. “I need to improve and I think Shane needs to improve on working on the car.
“It’s one of those things actually: you can do it in the workshop, but doing it in an environment like that is so different when you’ve actually bent something. The positive thing was we actually did fix that side of the car, albeit it took too long. So it means that we learned how to do it and we’ve done it and that’s all well and good, but we didn’t stay in the rally.”
Asked if he thinks the car could’ve been repaired in-time, Armstrong said yes but did point out the damage was quite extensive.
“I’d broken the steering arm and the compression strut on the left side, so that’s two separate things you need to replace, but then the fact that I’d broken the brake disc meant I needed to block off the brake line too, so it was like three fairly big things to do,” he explained. “And when we’d done those, then it was too late.
“But then I had actually broken the steering arm on the right side as well. When we returned to the road, we briefly glanced the wall on the right, which I didn’t think would have done any damage, but it seemed to have broken. So we basically had no steering at all when we parked the car up.
The damage was great, but Armstrong wants to be able to fix his car quicker in future
“It’s something that we do need to be good at,” Armstrong added. “Whenever we go into the rougher rallies coming up, I think it’s going to be important to be a bit more on it with the timing side of it.
“We know we can do it, it’s just doing it quickly.”
Armstrong and Byrne spent one day prior to Monte Carlo familiarizing themselves with the car, but before Safari Rally Kenya in March the plan is to “spend at least two to three days just in the workshop, working on the cars.”
Expectations for Sweden
Armstrong made a good account of himself in Monte – even considering the retirement – so does that raise expectations for Sweden next week?
“I think it’s interesting because deep down in Monte, like we were doing well but I wasn’t entirely happy overall,” he replied. “So yeah I want to keep proving [myself] but Sweden’s a very different rally.
Armstrong's last rally on snow and ice was 2022, when he won in Junior WRC
“Naturally on Tarmac I’m quite good, but then Monte was very mixed. Sweden’s all about flat out and just really getting to grips with the potential of the car. I’ll obviously compare to Josh [McErlean], compare to [Mãrtiņš] Sesks. I think in Monte Carlo, we definitely did ourselves really well with how we compared to Grég [Munster] and Josh. So yeah, that’s sort of what we can gauge ourselves off. And anything above that is a real bonus.”
Armstrong is “excited” to experience what he called the “ultimate driving experience” of driving a Rally1 car on proper snow tires.
“That’s the thing,”he smiled. “To experience a full-blown Monte, as I was calling it, in a Rally1, nobody’s probably ever going to experience that again, so for us to go through that was something special. And to go and do now Sweden, another classic, is going to be very special too.”
