A difficult start to his first full season in the World Rally Championship’s top flight has left Grégoire Munster hoping that a return to Croatia Rally’s asphalt surface later this month will provide the boost he needs.
The M-Sport driver has only three points to his name and is yet to record a top-10 finish in 2024, after a catalog of incidents in the first three rounds of the WRC.
Munster was forced to make use of super rally regulations to reach the finish of both the season-opening Monte Carlo Rally and last week’s Safari Rally Kenya after Saturday crashes. Neither were particularly large offs; in Monte Carlo, his car was simply beached on the lip of the road and in Kenya he clipped a rock and was unable to fix the damage caused.
In Sweden, a rally he’d only completed once before in a Rally3-specification Ford Fiesta, Munster completed the event’s full mileage but trips into the snowbanks and a puncture left him languishing in 23rd overall.
Munster and Louka have had a challenging start to their first full season at Rally1 level
It’s fair to say that it’s not how Munster hoped his first full year in Rally1 machinery would start following a promising couple of outings last year.
“Of course, it’s a bit disappointing,” reflected Munster when speaking to DirtFish. “You don’t want to start the season like that. But I think everyone knew as well that we were the least experienced one – not just about the Rally1 [car], but in general with the World Rally Championship and the events.
“We made some small mistakes but every time it was another [different] one. First time in Monte Carlo was like five kilometers per hour too fast; the second one [in Sweden] was like 10 bar of brake pressure too much; here it’s five centimeters too far out of the line.
“All kinds of small mistakes from my side, my fault. But we look for the light at the end of the tunnel and in Croatia, we go better.”
Immediately after downing tools on his Puma, which had been mortally wounded on Saturday’s Soysambu stage in Kenya, Munster was understandably despondent. But, given time to reflect, he was able to draw on the positives of the first three rounds.
I think everyone knew as well that we were the least experienced with the World Rally Championship and the eventsGrégoire Munster
“We showed some good pace,” he said. “Here we did some fourth and fifth [fastest] stage times. We had the same in Monte Carlo with a third-fastest stage time.
“And then when you look a bit at, for example, the time we do this year in the stages that are identical to previous years, sometimes that would have been a third [fastest] time or something like that.
“So you have to account a bit for the fact that we have less experience than the others. But it doesn’t excuse our mistakes and we need to try to look at why they keep happening and try to find a solution so it doesn’t anymore.”
Munster ran as high as sixth in Kenya before breaking his Puma's rear suspension
Asked what’s needed to eliminate such mistakes, Munster added: “For me, it’s a bit difficult to say because, like I said, it’s three different errors we did. A bit with speed, with knowledge of the car and I think we just have to be a bit patient and things will come together.
“Ten rallies left to go, so we’ve not even done one-quarter of the championship and we’re just looking forward to the rest of the season.
“I think on [Croatia] rally we have a bit more experience with the track, with the event in general. And also the fact it’s Tarmac, which I’m more, I would say, experienced on because of where I drove in the past; in Germany, in Belgium, it’s all Tarmac.
“So I think we might be a bit more at ease there.”
