M-Sport Ford driver Jon Armstrong is experiencing issues with his intercom due to how much he sweats during World Rally Championship stages.
Towards the end of Friday’s final stage at Rally Japan, Armstrong was struggling to hear co-driver Shane Byrne at times – an issue that also occurred during last month’s Rally Islas Canarias.
Usually an intercom problem can be traced to a faulty lead or a helmet swap between driver and co-driver, but at the end of the stage Armstrong explained that his body sweat was, bizarrely, to blame.
He went into more detail with DirtFish in the media zone.
“We seem to have a little issue on some rallies with my sweat getting into the intercom system,” Armstrong said. “But I think it’s a little bit related to where it plugs in.
Armstrong is getting "Darth Vader" feedback through his intercom due to his body sweat
“I think we’ve got a solution for it, but I’m just trying to keep it up out of the way. The stages have been very humid this morning especially, and this afternoon not so humid, but it’s still warm and you’re still sweating.
“I always sweat when I’m rallying anyway, so yeah, it’s just one thing you just deal with but it’s not good if it’s affecting the equipment that you’re using.”
M-Sport team principal Richard Millener confirmed M-Sport has been “working really hard” with helmet supplier Bell “and they’ve been really proactive in understand what’s going on”.
He added: “They managed to replicate the issue and it does seem to be something to do with the amount of sweat on the connector. When it starts to either dry out or warm up, it’s creating a bit of an issue, it’s creating this strange Darth Vader sound.
“But you know, the amount he does sweat, it’s quite salty, so it’s not [just] water in there, it’s salty [and] watery.
“I think there’s probably a fairly straightforward simple process but we’ve been trying to move around the locations of where you plug it in, or use different procedures for doing it so you don’t have to do extra procedures, but clearly we need to look at this more closely.
“We’re also working on some additional helmet cooling which we didn’t bring here, but maybe this is the little thing that caught us out with the temperatures – we knew it would be warmer at this point of the year [with Rally Japan running in May instead of November] but maybe not as hot as it is.
“The humidity I think hasn’t helped in the last couple of days. It’s a bit better today now, but you know, you learn some things when you go to rallies at different times of the year.
“It’s a lesson to be learned I guess. They didn’t lose too much time today.”
One potential solution is to attach a cooling device to the helmet, like drivers used at last year’s season finale Rally Saudi Arabia.
“Yeah we spoke about that,” Armstrong confirmed. “I guess I wasn’t expecting it to be quite as warm as what it is to be to be honest and I haven’t used that system, but yeah maybe you use it in Greece for sure.
“But yeah we just hadn’t actually put it on on the truck to come here because I don’t think any of us we’re expecting quite the the weather that we have.
“It’s quite cool there’s all these driver developments happening with the equipment that you can wear. I know there’s liquid cooling stuff and everything now too as well so yeah. But maybe I need to go to Dakar, they’ve got AC!”
Armstrong is ninth after day one, over two minutes off the lead
Armstrong ended Friday’s opening leg in ninth place, 23.9 seconds behind Hayden Paddon’s Hyundai.
“It’s probably not been quite the performance that we’re looking for, that’s for sure,” he confessed, “but it’s also our first time here and, you know, six months ago the guys were here at the same stages and you can probably see that with the likes of Hayden’s times compared to mine and compared to the front runners that we just don’t have quite the same knowledge.
“OK you still have to drive it and they’re driving so, so well, and we just don’t really have the rhythm all the time. But it’s still better than Canaries, so that’s good.
“Hopefully we can keep improving over the weekend and just try to really enjoy driving the car.”
