This has nothing to do with clouds or silver linings. M-Sport Ford team principal Richard Millener’s assessment of Jon Armstrong’s pace and performance is absolutely fair.
For the third rally in succession – which also happens to be just his third rally in a Ford Puma Rally1 car – Armstrong has delivered more speed than expected.
After running as high as third on the Monte Carlo Rally, Armstrong backed that up with a top-four time and eighth in Sweden before arriving in Kenya for a typical baptism of Safari Rally fire.
The typically rough African roads did bite the #95 Puma late on Friday when he damaged a compression strut and rear driveshaft, forcing him and co-driver Shane Byrne to change a suspension arm in the penultimate stage. But Millener is still impressed with the pace.
He told DirtFish: “It’s very hard for us because we sit there now and watch the stages expecting to see Jon fighting Thierry [Neuville], Adrien [Fourmaux] and Sami [Pajari] and Taka [Katsuta]… and he is! And that’s great, but then you’ve got to remember he’s only done what? Probably if you add them all up, 35 stages in a Rally1 car or something, which is mad.”
Armstrong was eighth before he spent more than 20 minutes on-stage fixing damage
Heading into Friday afternoon, Armstrong was running eighth – ahead of Esapekka Lappi and just 4.3 seconds off the back of the Finn’s Hyundai team-mate Fourmaux.
A puncture on the second pass of Geothermal was a precursor to a bigger issue on the following test, where he nudged a bank and damaged that compression strut. He parked the Puma and spent 24 minutes fixing the car’s suspension.
“I’m gutted for him,” said Millener. “The puncture beforehand, I think, was a bit of a Kenyan incident. It seemed a bit of luck of the draw for punctures. But there’s probably still some learning to be done there because the very top guys don’t get as many punctures.
“I think that’s due to just experience, which he’s openly said he’s building and learning at this point. But his approach in general is fantastic. They’ve got a really sensible, level-headed way.”
The M-Sport crews all spent time working on their entry cars at the team’s Dovenby Hall base last week – Millener said that experience proved invaluable.
Armstrong built the very Ford Puma Rally1 he's rallying at round three
“Obviously, we don’t want to see him at the side of the road, but it’s good to see those skills come to use. OK, they’re 20 minutes down, but if you have another rally where you do that damage right at the end of the stage and you get out and you don’t lose any time and you repair it then great.
“You could argue that it’s probably less time lost by retiring [and taking penalties] for today instead of completing the stages – but it’s not going to make any difference to us in what we’re trying to prove and get Jon doing at the moment. It’s a fix, carry on, drive the car with front-wheel drive and learn all about that.”
Millener confirmed both Armstrong and Josh McErlean, whose Puma was sidelined with a cracked gearbox casing on Kedong 2, will be back in action on Saturday morning.
