Spanish rally fans have spent the past month fervently dreaming of a lime green Ford Puma Rally1 taking on Rally Islas Canarias this April.
José Antonio Suárez, or “Cohete” (rocket) to his Spanish followers, has a long-held dream of reaching rallying’s top level. Since he first saw a WRC car blaze past him at speed on Rally Portugal in 1996, he’s spent every minute chasing it.
He’s come close in the past, even testing a Fiesta RS WRC at M-Sport’s headquarters back in 2012. Now he’s closer than ever – thanks to long-time backer Chema Rodríguez, head of the Recalvi automotive parts chain, he has the budget to make his dream a reality.
That led to a public declaration at the start of February by Suárez: he would be on the startline of Rally Islas Canarias in a Puma Rally1. The dream would finally become a reality.
But it’s time to hold the press. Cohete won’t be rocketing a Puma through the twists and turns of Gáldar, Tejeda and Artenara that he’s traversed on so many occasions in the past this time around. Not yet, anyway.
Suárez finished fourth on last year's ERC-counting Rally Islas Canarias
“It’s hard,” Richard Millener, M-Sport team principal, told DirtFish.
“We have quite a big workload at the minute with the number of cars that we have running. Obviously, we have multiple projects with M-Sport as well, so it’s not as easy as just adding cars like it was previously. So there’s still a bit to decide.
“What I’ve read isn’t quite what I would say at the moment. There’s nothing agreed or guaranteed. But there is discussion.
“It’s good that we have interest. I actually have a few people interested. But the problem is, we have limited chassis, and when you have events where you’re using most of them, if you have any kind of upsets, it means it’s very difficult for us. We have to either repair or rebuild, and the turnaround times for the whole season now are pretty much a week, maximum. So it’s a lot to ask.”
It’s a problem that could impact Suárez’s hopes of turning up to Las Palmas in a Puma – but also any other customers that fancy a spin in a Rally1 car this year.
We've only built 11 chassisRichard Millener
Jourdan Serderidis, who campaigned a Puma in Sweden alongside Munster, McErlean and Sesks, is the exception, as he owns his chassis outright rather than renting.
All of M-Sport’s drivers contribute budget to their programs through sponsorships, so keeping its primary entries running – Grégoire Munster and Josh McErlean at every round and Mārtiņš Sesks at six rounds – is the priority. Throwing additional one-off appearances for other customers into the mix makes chassis availability marginal for its primary entrants if unexpected incidents come into play.
“We’ve got to be a bit careful on what we agree to and what we can manage,” said Millener. “We had such a good year last year with the car and everything and I don’t want to lose that reliability and lose the results we got from that.
“The more cars you add, the more pressure it puts on. Certainly for teams like Toyota this year, who are running up to five cars, I know how hard that is and how much of a challenge that is. So there’s a balance to be found.”
There’s also a question of economies of scale. Rally1 machinery was never built in big numbers, with the cost of hybrid-spec machines prohibitive to the majority of potential customers and the technical formula not legal in most national championships.
Serderidis owns his own chassis, leaving only seven available in M-Sport's pool
Simply building new Rally1 machines to facilitate an influx of interest from renters now that hybrid has been dropped is, at least for M-Sport, not a viable option either.
“We’ve only built 11 chassis,” explained Millener. “One was destroyed in Monte Carlo in 2022 [when Adrien Fourmaux crashed]. One’s a test car and we sold two. So that leaves seven of what we still have now.
“Yes, we could build more, but there’s still uncertainty on 2026 and 2027. And the minute you start to build another one, you find you have some bits in stock and others not, so then you have to order more, but when you only want to order a small quantity, the price goes up.”
“An easy example is when I say: right, I want to add another car, and then we haven’t got enough wheel rims, so then you have to order more wheel rims. A magnesium wheel rim is not cheap, around £500-£600 ($630-$760) per rim – and there are minimum order quantities.
Even items like wheel rims can constribute to cost of additional chassis being prohibitive
“There’s so many more things than people just saying, well it’s just another car, it’s four more people. There’s so many knock-on effects and it’s balancing that and making sure that we are able to be as efficient as possible across the year whilst still creating customer revenue and getting new people in the car.
“It’s great for fans and the events to see more people, but sadly it isn’t a yes or no, there’s often a lot of discussion that’s needed to make it work.”
That discussion remains ongoing between M-Sport and Suárez. Whether a lime green Puma shows up in the car park of Las Palmas’ football stadium – the long-time service park for Rally Islas Canarias – remains to be seen.
Suárez is expected to find out if his dream becomes a reality next week.
