M-Sport Ford team principal Rich Millener feels the team “achieved what we probably wanted to achieve” in Estonia but is confident of bouncing back stronger in Turkey next week.
Both of M-Sport’s rivals Hyundai and Toyota enjoyed more testing time prior to Rally Estonia, entering several national rallies to get back up to speed in preparation for the WRC’s first event in nearly six months.
While M-Sport did get some testing, it knew it was on the back foot heading to Estonia, with lead drivers Esapekka Lappi and Teemu Suninen predicting they wouldn’t be able to challenge the other teams on pace alone.
That proved to be the case, as Suninen – the highest placed Fiesta WRC driver – was sixth and over two and a half minutes down on rally winner Ott Tänak.
Millener was not disheartened though, and instead pointed to upcoming, rougher rallies in Turkey and Sardinia as events where he expects M-Sport to be in better shape.
“I think it’s always difficult when you’re not fighting right at the front but I think we achieved what we probably wanted to achieve here, getting back into the rhythm, we’re back rallying again,” Millener said.
“We knew that the others had done a lot more running before us so I think we should be happy with what we’ve achieved.
“We’re going from here [Estonia] which is one of the fastest rallies we’ve seen and really, really crazy to watch on television to somewhere completely different now, a lot slower but a lot more tricky because of the rough conditions.
“We’ve all got experience in Turkey and our intention is to try and bounce back and try and get some good results there.”
M-Sport has not won the Marmaris-based Rally Turkey since it returned to the WRC calendar in 2018, but Millener felt the Fiesta WRC has proved it is a challenger on rallies where the emphasis is on robustness as much as it is speed.
“I think you have to have a really sensible approach in Turkey,” he explained.
“Obviously you can never afford to back off and just drive and see what happens because everybody’s going as fast as they can but I think you have got to play a bit of a longer game and be prepared that even if it’s not going your way at the start it doesn’t mean that’s how it’ll finish. A number of times we’ve seen that in Turkey.
“You’ve got to have a strong car which we feel we have and one that’s been proven there which again we feel we have so we’re looking forward to that one and Sardinia also afterwards.”
