An “emotional” M-Sport Ford team principal Richard Millener has reacted to the team’s triple retirement on one single stage of Rally Italy Sardinia.
Josh McErlean and Mãrtiņš Sesks both retired on the second stage itself, while Grégoire Munster parked up on the road section afterwards.
McErlean and Munster had similar excursions – clipping a rock and destroying the rear of their Puma Rally1s. In McErlean’s case, according to Millener he “ripped the entire rear wheel out, damper, links, driveshaft – everything” which naturally forced him to stop.
Munster meanwhile managed to crawl through the stage but his efforts to fix the car afterwards were in vain.
Sesks’ retirement was the most dramatic as he was caught out over a crest in fifth gear, veered into some protective fence and rolled multiple times.
Jourdan Serderidis’ private Ford Puma is therefore the only M-Sport Rally1 car left in the rally.
Millener was actually on his way to a meeting when events began to unravel.
He told DirtFish: “It was a funny one this morning. I actually had an important meeting I had to go to, which was as that stage was happening. So I was following the splits still and saw that Grég dropped 21 seconds, second split, so I went in to have a look and see what was going on.
“It was clear that that was a problem. So then you’re a little bit disappointed, but you’re like, OK, still going. Maybe you can fix it. Let’s see. Gonna lose a lot of time, but we still got two other cars here this weekend. Two guys that, you know, [we’re] very confident in as well. So I went to my meeting.
“On the way to my meeting, I got another message that said ‘Josh stopped’. I was like, oh my God. But we didn’t have anything to see at that point. Couldn’t see it. And literally as I sat down at the table, I got another message that said ‘Mãrtiņš on his roof, stopped’. So you look back now, you could say it’s quite amusing, but at the time, it’s just… I wasn’t angry. It’s just so disappointing like one after the other after the other.
“It’s a really hard one to take, it makes you a bit emotional about everything because everybody’s put so much effort into this,” Millener added.
Millener is dejected after three cars all retired on the one stage
“It’’ll be fine. We’ll get over it. We’ve had tough days before, we’ll have tough days again. But I do really feel for everybody. There’s so much effort into it that is not seen behind the scenes and how much people devote to this. We’re all doing the best we possibly can. But like I said, sadly, some days it’s just against you.”
Munster, McErlean and Sesks are all inexperienced drivers finding their feet in the WRC – and they were the three who were caught out on the brand-new stage.
“I spoke with the guys a little bit before the rally, and they did say how complicated it is,” Millener said. “But Sardinia does this.
“Sardinia is actually quite high speed. It’s really loose, it’s narrow, it’s very technical. And literally no room for error. You go on the grass, there’s either a stone wall in there or a rock that isn’t going to move. And I think that’s what’s caught certainly two of the three out this morning.
“I would say that they all know the mistakes they’ve made, but sometimes I think you can tell them, and we did talk about it, you’ve got to be very precise on these stages. It’s very easy to take in and acknowledge that and accept that you’re going to be clean and tidy, but until you have an issue like today and you rip a wheel off it, that’s when it will stay in their minds forever now that you just can’t get away with it here.
“And I just sat down with Ott [Tänak] and he’s like, ‘it’s Sardinia, you can’t do it’. And sometimes, you know, you need to go through the experience to learn from it. But it’s a bloody hard way to learn.”
Sesks is unlikely to return in Sardinia
Munster and McErlean’s cars should at least be fixable for Saturday, however Sesks’ participation in the rest of the event is doubtful.
“I’m not so confident we’ll repair it,” Millener stated. “Maybe the cage is OK, maybe. We need to have a closer look. But we’ve got to balance a lot here, commercially and sporting-wise. And we’ve got another event with him in just over two weeks.
“We’ve got only four days back in the UK to repair the same chassis regardless. We would put a hell of a lot of panels on it here. It’s all the carbon panels that we need to put on to probably bodge effectively here, take it back to the UK, take them all off and put probably more new ones on to fix that.
“It’s a tough one. I want to give Mãrtiņš as much opportunity as he can, but is he going to gain so much from being first on the road for two days? I’m not so sure. It’s a tough one, but there’s a lot of elements I’ve got to take into account, and I hope he understands that.
“But we will have a look when it comes back, but right now, that’s my current feeling.”
