Gus Greensmith has identified September’s Acropolis Rally Greece as a target event for his next step in performance.
The M-Sport Ford World Rally Team driver has enjoyed consistent improvement in performance through this season and feels the Lamia-based event is a sensible option to push for more speed and potentially a maiden stage win.
Naturally, the Briton will chase that illusive first fastest time in the next two rounds in Belgium and Finland, but the more rugged Greek terrain – which is new for the majority of drivers – makes it a more likely option.
“We’re looking at Greece as possible place for a big push,” Greensmith told DirtFish. “We’ve seen the car’s strong on rough rallies like Kenya, so Greece and the Acropolis would be a good place to step up again.
“I’ve still not got that stage win and that’s really p****** me off, so I need to get that sorted. We’ll have a few massive pushes on a few stages where I think we’ve got a chance.
Not many of the drivers have been there, but Chris [Patterson, co-driver] has done the event a few times before, so we’ll be able to use his experience there.”
Despite being ruled out of contention on Rally Estonia with a water pump problem on day one, Greensmith was happy with his pace, and he was sitting in fifth after the first two stages before the engine issue arrived on SS3.
“Apart from one small overshoot, there were no mistakes in Estonia,” he added. “That’s good. To be honest, it’s been getting better and better with every event and I want to continue to push hard through to the end of the year to see what we can do in terms of pace.”
Asked about the chances of him remaining with M-Sport Ford to drive a Puma Rally1 next season, he added: “We know M-Sport always builds a cracking car off the bat, that has to be taken into consideration.
“I’ve driven the [2022] car and so I’ve got a feeling of what it’s like. We’ll see.
“My immediate focus is on continuing the upward trajectory – I need to maintain this over the next three or four rallies and we’ll see where we are. If we continue like this, I don’t see why we shouldn’t be in a World Rally Car on merit. I just need to focus on keeping these improvements, take a few stage wins and then, by the end of the year, we could be fighting for a podium.”
