A confident Richard Millener says the M-Sport team is ‘fired up’ for the rest of the World Rally Championship season, starting with this week’s Rally Finland.
Although it isn’t in the fight for the 2024 drivers’ title, after losing the services of 2019 World Rally champion Ott Tänak over the winter, in some respects that has actually suited the semi-works team which has punched above its weight with Adrien Fourmaux.
Repromoting Fourmaux to a Rally1 seat has proved a masterstroke as he has delivered three podium finishes and five stage wins thus far – proving himself to be a regular contender on every surface this season.
Fourmaux has a target of fourth place in the drivers’ championship, but M-Sport team principal Millener sees no reason why he can’t fight for similar overall positions on all the upcoming events as he lets his driver off the leash
Millener wants his lead driver to go for it in Finland
“I mean, look, we’re fired up. We’’re fired up to go,” Millener told DirtFish.
“We’re not coming to rallies to try and inherit positions in this latter part of the year, we’re there to fight.
“I think if you take off the time Adrien lost on the first stage [in Latvia], his mindset would have been very different come Friday morning, and I think he might have been in a different position.
“But, you know, we’ve said before in these very fast rallies when you fall outside of the fight and you can drop time because you’re not there being pushed by someone or pushing somebody. And he found himself in a bit of no man’s land at one point and got it back. But it’s always hard from there on.
“So I think Adrian’s got very good at resetting, going again, but then again Finland’s a new rally. So yeah, let’s go for it.”
M-Sport was perhaps lagging behind rivals Toyota and Hyundai on certain stages of Rally Latvia though, which Fourmaux says is down to the engine. But because “all the team is working to improve that part of the car” he has added confidence for Finland, which is also a twistier rally than Latvia.
“I think we need to develop a little bit more the engine. The rest I’m quite confident,” Fourmaux told DirtFish.
The Puma's engine is a weak point but Fourmaux says the team is working on it
“For Finland, you still need the engine, that’s for sure, but there is also much more corners, crest, etc than here, sometimes it’s just flat out for two kms. So I’m much more confident for Finland than I was for this rally.”
Fourmaux also produced a mega performance in Finland last year driving the Ford Fiesta Rally2, finishing second in WRC2 and third in the Rally2 class among the swarm of Scandinavians.
“I did podium last year and I was really, really enjoying it,” he added.
“That’s a really great rally. So that’s the legacy of the championship, so we are happy to go back in Finland.”
Fourmaux produced one of his best drives of last season at Rally Finland
Despite not having “the best weekend” in Latvia where he felt he struggled with traction, team-mate Grégoire Munster is also looking forward to Finland – an event he has started twice before.
“I think we’ve done two pretty scary [high-speed] events just now, so yeah, I feel ready for Finland,” he told DirtFish.
“We’ll watch a lot of onboards. It’s a rally we’ve done already previous year, so yeah, just looking forward to it.”
