None of us know a lot about Hankook’s new-for-2025 World Rally Championship rubber. But the heavy hitters all called one bit right.
The one who learns them the quickest will be the one who succeeds this weekend.
Monte Carlo has always been about tire calls. Knowing when to take a risk, and when to play it safe. Perfectly judging that line between brave and naive.
Get it wrong and your rally can be over in an instant. But get it right, and you make yourself a legend.
With all the evolution and change afoot in rallying over the years, it’s comforting to know that still holds true.
And it was brilliant to see an unexpected driver stand forward into the limelight.
The signs were there that this might have been coming from Grégoire Munster. Remember that epic stage performance on Rally Japan where the M-Sport man almost won it? His performances are on a serious upward trajectory.
Standing on the balcony of Hotel de Paris, overlooking the start down in Monaco’s Casino Square, there was a newfound confidence shimmering from him. Munster looked, in a word, ready.
When Friday morning dawned, he was in an unspectacular position – 48.8 seconds off the lead. But clearly the Luxembourger was ready to throw the dice on the stages.
Arriving near the start-line of Saint-Maurice / Aubessagne, out he got to inspect the tires of his rivals. Sébastien Ogier? Winter tires. Old team-mate Adrien Fourmaux? Same deal.
But Munster was cooking a different plan: super-softs.
Two to be precise, crossed with two non-studded winter tires.
He was the only man to make such a decision for that opening stage. He was rewarded with the second-fastest time. Over the morning loop, he was the fastest driver.
Munster had thrown it all on black and beaten the dealer.
“Yeah, I think it was good,” Munster modestly told DirtFish.
“For sure, in some situations, it would have been pretty similar, I think, having more studs on the car. Like, for example, in the morning, I think it was pretty bold for us to go on so much black ice with only two studs.
“There, I think we could have been even faster. But here in the last one, it was really tricky in the icy bits, but generally, the stage was pretty dry. So, yeah, on the dryer section, we had an advantage for sure.”
Munster has turned heads with his performance so far this weekend
Munster wasn’t just on the right tires though, he was really driving the car. He was visibly shaking at the end of SS5.
“Yeah,” he said, “because we knew we had a different tire package so if we wanted to make it work, we needed to take some risks. But in the icy bits, you know, the other ones have like two studs. You have zero.
“So when you attack that ice, you commit to it, and you just hope it’s going to work out. But a couple of times, it was really on the limit. So yeah, for sure, at the end, you have a big adrenaline kick.”
Munster was quick to credit his route note crew of Stéphane Lhonnay and Kévin Bronner for feeding him the tip-off to not bother with studs, but he still did the job.
It was a beautiful coming-of-age moment at an event that can form reputations. Cruelly, he wouldn’t get the luck his bravery deserved when first a puncture, and then an electrical problem on the way back to service, launched him well south of the top-four position he’d worked hard to attain.
But this won’t go unnoticed.
In a year where M-Sport has lost its leading light in Fourmaux (who proved how superb he is with his own performance in a Hyundai on Friday), Munster’s timing could not have been better.
He is automatically the team leader at M-Sport now with a season of Rally1 experience under his belt vs zero starts (prior to this weekend) for Josh McErlean.
But if we see more of the Munster we saw on Friday, that thought no longer seems so absurd.