Adrien Fourmaux is talking about his mistake in Stage 18 which costed him the fifth place in Croatia last weekend.
The Frenchman was at the top five from Stage 1 to 17 despite the fact that his Ford Puma R1 suffered from misfires and engine issues on the final stage of Saturday morning. After his two consecutive podiums in 2024, he was fighting with Ott Tanak for the fourth place of Croatia Rally, but eventually his hopes faded when he clipped an anticut device resulting in damaging the steering arm of his car. He and Alex Coria immediately went out and tried to repair the bent steering arm in order to continue and to score some valuable points for M-Sport Ford. The crew managed to fix the car and completed Stage 18 after fifteen minutes, but the most impressive thing of their work is that they set the fastest time in Powerstage which means that they took the five bonus points from PS and remain third on the championship.
"For sure we were pushing for the Super Sunday points", Fourmaux told DirtFish.
"In one corner, it’s flat on the entry.
"I had started to turn the car and had some small understeer.
"But then after, there was like a hill and car unloaded the tires and it turned quicker than I expected.
"I hit the anti-cut pole a little bit, but just enough to break the steering arm.
"So then instead of continuing in the stage and risking crashing somewhere or damaging, we stopped, changing it in the side of the road, and carried on.
"First, I needed to see and watch what is broken.
"But when I saw what was broken, I was like: come on, yes!
"We can continue!
"It was not so easy because the bolt was bent, so I was really struggling to remove that.
"I burned my overalls also with the brakes, but it saved me.
"At least I’m not burned.
"It’s warm, it’s over, we did it.
"We took our time because we knew the day was over, so we have just decided, okay, just do it.
"The team said we were quite quick to change it anyway!".
Source: DirtFish.com
Photo Credits: M-Sport
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