Ott Tänak is over a minute off the lead. Thierry Neuville is over a minute and a half off the lead. Toyota has won every single stage so far.
Rally Japan isn’t going to plan for Hyundai at the end of Friday.
So how has Adrien Fourmaux managed to put almost a minute between himself and Tänak, nip ahead of one of the Toyotas into fourth (and get within 0.1s of a stage win) when his two world champion team-mates have struggled so badly?
“I don’t know, I cannot really explain that,” he said. “But at least it’s positive.”
What Fourmaux can explain, however, is how he’s been able to unlock potential from the car that Tänak and Neuville clearly haven’t. And it all stems from him recognizing how the car needed to be driven and adapting his driving style.
Fourmaux told DirtFish: “It’s just by the feeling that for me to make the car work, I really need to arrive with a lot of braking and really wait for the car to rotate before going back to the throttle.
Changing the way he needs to drive the i20 N Rally1 has worked for Fourmaux
“So I really need to be patient all the time, but it’s really quite a frustrating feeling when you want to be patient, when you really want to go back on acceleration, you know? It’s where you go out from the corners, but I really needed to be patient and wait before going back to the throttle, or I have some understeer, so the car washed out with the front. So every time I was forcing.
“But this, unfortunately, I cannot really replicate that in tricky conditions, because you cannot ride with that load on the tricky, then the risk is you go out. So it’s not easy. That’s why I’m losing quite a lot of time on the, I would say, slippier conditions.”
There’s irony there, in that Fourmaux used to be accused of being an impatient driver. Now look.
“The car is working really well on the really smooth and grippy Tarmac,” he continued. “But then as soon as we arrive on some tricky corners or some polluted corners, then I really lose the pace, the balance really changes and I really struggle to make it turn.
“So that’s the issue that I’m facing actually. But for the rest, I can be pleased with my performance and stay as close as I can with the Toyota guys.”
Contrast that to Neuville, who was setback by a broken rear differential in the morning but still struggled to find as effective a rhythm as his French team-mate.
“He’s close to the Toyota sometimes, so that’s surprising,” Neuville told DirtFish. “But he’s faster than us, not so much. We’re on a bit different setup. And it seems like his one is working better at the moment.
“But our target has to be to find something which brings us performance for next year rather than just here this weekend.”
Like in CER, Neuville and Fourmaux are both driving what Hyundai calls the ‘evo’ car, with Tänak using the version the team started the season with in Monte Carlo.
In Fourmaux’s words “there is nothing to compare” between the two cars and their setups: “Springs, bars, geos, everything is different. So even the differentials are different. It’s two different cars,” he elaborated.
“Thierry is a bit more similar, but he has different differentials. And for me, it was not working in Japan. That’s why I did not take them.”
Neuville at least feels he’s heading in “the right direction”, but there’s plenty more to try as Hyundai effectively begins to use Rally Japan as an extended test session.
Neuville's pre-event pessimism has so far proved true
“We have a list of things we want to test tomorrow,” Neuville confirmed. “There’s no midday service so we have to do the changes overnight to be able to test those tomorrow and give some more feedback.
“At the moment, it feels like we are coming back to what we drove with last year’s car. And it seems the only thing, the only direction which works.
“Obviously with that new car we wanted to find a balance, a good balance with the car which keeps the four wheels on the ground but obviously we are struggling with that, so we are coming back to what we have been driving with the old car.
“It’s not 100% the way we wanted to go with that car, but if we have to, we will.”
Fourmaux added: “I’m just feeling that we are a bit lacking days of testing with the evo car. And unfortunately we don’t really arrive prepared before the rallies. We get some technical issues before Central Europe, but then after that, you don’t have so many days left and you cannot test in Japan.
“So actually, then after, it’s difficult if you don’t get the best setup arriving to the rally, it’s really never easy to find [during] the rally. You cannot, like, do some miracles. So actually I think that’s the issue we’ve got. And that’s why I’ve just decided, now I have got a balance, I just drive. We’ll find the solution later on.”
That approach has worked so far at least.
