Adrien Fourmaux has explained the reasons behind his early check-in to TC14A, which effectively cost him his first World Rally Championship win in Saudi Arabia.
The Hyundai driver led for six of the 17 stages this weekend, but a one-minute time penalty for checking into Friday’s time control one minute early cost him any chance of victory.
Fourmaux eventually finished 54.7 seconds behind his rally-winning team-mate Thierry Neuville, but still achieved a career-best result of second.
Asked by DirtFish to explain exactly what happened at Friday’s time control, Fourmaux said: “We had wrong information which had not been checked. We checked in early by 10 seconds, and then we got a one-minute penalty.
“Alex [Coria, co-driver] did ask a marshal if it was allowed to make the early check in, but I think there was probably a language barrier and they did not really understand Alex. So then they said yes, but actually it was no.
“So yes, it’s very a shame because at the end, it’s three mistakes, you know. But I don’t know what to say more than that. It’s very, very a shame. Especially [because] we finished the rally under the minute [behind the winner], so it means that we are the unofficial winner. So it’s quite crazy to be fair.”
Fourmaux did not want to single out Coria for the incident as his co-driver was working off incorrect information from the team. But he equally doesn’t want to see the same thing happen again.
“He checked in by believing the wrong information from the team, you know?” Fourmaux said of Coria. “You should have checked it from the official paper, you see what I mean? But at the end, you also need to trust people that you are working with, so it’s a difficult situation.
“The only thing I can say is, in this type of situation, you don’t check in early for 10 seconds. You just wait.”
Hyundai protested the penalty, but was ultimately unsuccessful.
Nevertheless, Fourmaux was proud of his performance in Saudi Arabia.
“Yeah, for sure. If you remove this thing, I’m really, really pleased with how we managed the race,” he said. “We took the decision to take soft at the beginning, against the others, and we made the right choice for that. And then after that, we were leading, they were catching us, we were losing the lead, and then the next day we were getting back the lead, and it’s been like that all weekend.
“So we were really managing the pressure, because when you see them coming back, you’re like, ‘Ah, they’re going to catch us, etc’. But we really managed it. So I’m really pleased how we did it and how I did it to get the self-control inside the car because in some places it’s really easy to go mad. So, yeah, positive anyway.”
