Adrien Fourmaux explains that he was sick on the last day of Ypres Rally Belgium and, despite Alex Coria's concerns, decided to continue the rally while at the same time he can understand the frustration he made to M-Sport Ford.
The Frenchman was fifth overall until the start of the penultimate stage of Ypres Rally and was chasing Oliver Solberg for the fourth place of the rally, but unfortunately the first one crashed in Stage 19 as he ran off into a ditch and the car got heavy damage to the front end.
Due to the fact that Acropolis Rally is set to be held two weeks after the end of Ypres Rally, the M-Sport mechanics were unable to fix the damaged chassis of Fourmaux's Puma, therefore the team decided to withdraw his entry from the round 10 of this year's World Rally Championship.
"It went wrong at the beginning of the day", Fourmaux said.
"I was throwing up a lot on the parc fermé, so I was ill.
"But then on the morning I was like ‘OK, we are doing good times even when we are ill’, so it seems that in the stages it doesn’t really disturb me.
"But then we came back to the service, then I couldn’t really drink, I couldn’t really eat something.
"So then I said ‘OK, in the morning it was fine, so in the stages it will be OK’.
"And Alex, a few times on the road section, he was like ‘Adrien, are you OK?’ ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ ‘Are you OK?’ ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ And then I said ‘OK, let’s do a good stage.
"If we drive fast but not crazy, I will be focused, and if I’m focused it will be OK’.
"It was a simple stage I would say.
"So we started, it’s really fast, you have fast corners, you have a long straight, a square right and then after you have this 800-meter straight.
"And on the 800m straight there was a lot of things going into my head like ‘you have to stay focused’, ‘oh no, but listen to Alex’ etc.
"And then I arrived, I understeered the corner and accelerated on.
"I didn’t feel right.
"In the end the right thing would have been to just say ‘OK, I’m bad’.
"But the morning was OK. I was like ‘naa, but it was OK in the morning’.
"So I did it.
"The wrong mistake was the first time for me to drive when I was ill, but I will remember for the future.
"I think we always learn from the mistakes, unfortunately.
"So for me I have learned that when I’m ill I need to be careful.
"For sure it was frustrating and yeah for sure it’s not easy, Malcolm was disappointed, I was.
"How it can be different, actually.
"And I completely understand the situation.
"If I was Malcolm, for sure you are frustrated, you are disappointed, you don’t understand.
"I’m already working on the next rallies, and also myself, to prepare.
"Because the time between the rallies is so short, actually, it’s only one or two weeks but we have also the tests etc.
"You need also time to rest, but then you don’t really have the time to prepare.
"So I take the time to prepare the future".
Finally, he believes that it was good for him that he was able to take part during the recce of Acropolis Rally: "It was really good for me to do the recce, to have the knowledge of the stages and also some understanding also of the roads again.
"Because it’s still good to do some stages, even if it’s not at the race pace, for sure it’s below the race pace, but just to still think what would be the tire choice, what would be the rhythm.
"From the outside, I will watch and see ‘OK, for me I want to do that, so what will we do?’
"During the rally it’s always a bit more difficult because we don’t really have the time to analyze, so I will take the advantage to analyze a little bit".
Source: DirtFish.com
Photo Credits: M-Sport
Post a Comment