Jon Armstrong has grabbed the limelight in the M-Sport Ford camp so far in 2026, but that’s not the disaster it might seem for team-mate Josh McErlean.
McErlean’s season has been one to forget so far, with three retirements from four legs in Monte Carlo, an engine-related retirement in Kenya and then a starter motor problem in Croatia that led to his Puma Rally1 continually needing to be push-started on Saturday.
His only top-10 finish was in Sweden, where the sophomore driver placed ninth.
“If anyone knows where I can buy some luck, I have my credit card here waiting,” McErlean quipped.
However Armstrong isn’t much better off in terms of overall finishes, with just an eighth place finish to his name – also claimed in Sweden. But his speed has been a major talking point in 2026, particularly in Croatia where he set nine top-three stage times and collected third place in both Super Sunday and the powerstage.
McErlean, though, sees this as a benefit in terms of benchmarking his own pace.
McErlean's stronger on gravel rather than Tarmac, but did face plenty of gravel in Croatia!
He told DirtFish: “Croatia has been character building and straight up to the last stage it proved dramatic from the whole rally, so we’ve learned a lot. It’s been pretty clean from our side – OK, the punctures, but everyone got them – but again, the end result isn’t there.
“It’s been nice obviously to improve my Tarmac pace and I think the cars have improved a lot as well. So it’s a credit to the team that’s still in the work to get it near the window.
“Obviously Jon’s pace is really good and he’s a good benchmark to have now. It’s been a while since I’ve had a team-mate that’s been proper on Tarmac, like probably back in the Rally2 days at Škoda, where you had Solberg to compare with and for sure Jon is very good.
“Hopefully we can learn something this week to take into Canaries.”
Two of McErlean’s best WRC results have come on Tarmac (Monte Carlo and CER 2025), but he’s quick to acknowledge it’s the surface he needs to work hardest to improve on.
McErlean is in need of a trouble-free rally, which he hopes will come in Canarias
“It’s quite a short gap,” he added, referencing next week’s Rally Islas Canarias. “Obviously we tried to link the diffs similar to Canaries and today we tried a setup more in that direction, which seemed to work OK.
“As I said it’s definitely improved since last year so that’s a positive in itself. But I think we can still try and find some more and the Toyotas are still a bit up the road I think. But we’ve definitely closed the gap to them a little bit.”
Armstrong said he is also benefitting from working with McErlean, who has a year’s extra experience in Rally1 than he does.
He told DirtFish: “I know it’s not so easy for him and Eoin [Treacy, co-driver] at the minute. There’s lots of drama been happening with small issues, small mistakes.
“Josh is a really good driver and we’ve seen that with his Rally2 results, especially the year he was in the Škoda, he had some really strong results. I think as long as he can relax more into the driving and just really try to find ways to improve whilst keeping it clean, that’s sort of the same as what we’re trying to do. I’m sure there will be better rallies coming for them ahead. All you can do is focus on the small details and small steps.
“It’s been good working with them this year, even just on set-up stuff for Canarias and working on set-up for this rally as well, is quite a close-knit thing between us and our engineers. So that’s been really good. I think we’re all enjoying that process so hopefully they have a bit more luck in the future.”
