M-Sport driver Adrien Fourmaux has told DirtFish he isn’t heading to the European Rally Championship just for practice and instead is “here for the fight.”
It was announced last week that Fourmaux would be contesting ERC season opener Rally di Roma in a Ford Fiesta R5 Mk2 on July 24-26, and DirtFish understands that he will also compete on Rally Liepāja on August 14-16 as preparation for the next World Rally Championship round in Estonia.
Fourmaux’s likely challengers in the ERC1 Junior class – for drivers aged under 29 in R5 cars – are Emil Lindholm, Efren Llarena, Callum Devine and Erik Cais, and he is determined to beat them all.
“Honestly the goal will be to be able to fight for a podium or maybe more. It will be a big challenge for us, [but] it’s not just to come back in the car it will be really to have a good result,” Fourmaux said of his rally aims to DirtFish.
“I know that we have to do a good result and if we can win the rally after our win on the Malcolm Wilson Rally [in March] I think it will be a good restart to the season. We are prepared to fight and we are not here just for the event, we are here for the fight for sure.”
Fourmaux will adopt a similar approach for the rest of his WRC2 campaign too. While he is unsure how his complete schedule will look, the 25-year-old will definitely be in Estonia – a rally he has prior experience of having finished third in class there in 2019 driving a Ford Fiesta R2T19.
“Last year was my first time in the WRC, it was completely new for me but this year I was expecting a good result,” he said.
“I don’t know if you remember our times in Monte-Carlo, we had good pace but we got two punctures; puncture one I don’t know where [or how I got it] but second one was completely my fault.
“Sweden was a special rally this year, it was not completely the same as last year we can say, so it’s a specialist rally from local guys, the Swedish or Norwegian guys, it’s really difficult to fight against [them].
“We are fifth now but I know Hyundai’s guys [Ole Christian Veiby and Nikolay Gryazin] have made three events because they did Mexico, for us it was [supposed to be] Japan [for our flyaway]. But we are in WRC2 to fight and win.”
Despite not heading to Mexico, Mads Østberg leads WRC2 for Citroën team PH Sport by nine points over Gryazin. Third placed Tidemand is eighth overall in the WRC courtesy of a sixth place finish on Rally México.
Fourmaux is 20 points shy of Østberg and eight clear of M-Sport team-mate Rhys Yates.
