Driving for the privateer team M-Sport Ford, Fourmaux claimed five podium finishes and ranked fifth in the championship standings. Following his successful season, Hyundai signed the 29-year-old Frenchman as their third driver to support the team’s top stars, Ott Tänak and Thierry Neuville.
It’s evident that Fourmaux will now, for the first time, receive a salary directly from a manufacturer, reducing the need to rely on sponsors unless he wants to further boost his earnings. However, at Hyundai, Fourmaux will need to accept the role of a third driver.
Fourmaux has now shared the real reason why he left M-Sport for the South Korean manufacturer.
“We were waiting for some call from Ford and it never came,” Fourmaux explained to Dirtfish.
Essentially, Fourmaux hoped for significant support from Ford’s parent company for car development, which would have allowed him to truly challenge the top names and compete for at least a championship medal next season.
“Then at some point, I had a call with Malcolm (Wilson, M-Sport managing director) and Malcolm said: ‘Sorry Adrien, but I can’t afford you. So yeah, thank you, and we’ll see you next year with Hyundai overalls’. Overall, it was more like that than just saying to Malcom: ‘Ciao-ciao.'”
Over the past five years, Fourmaux frequently visited Ford Performance’s headquarters in North Carolina, where he drove the Puma Rally1 car in a simulator. However, towards the end of this year, he expressed frustration over the team’s inability to develop the car further. With M-Sport lacking realistic chances to compete against the factory teams of Hyundai and Toyota, particularly during the final years of the current homologation cycle (2025-26), Fourmaux’s decision to switch teams became inevitable.
“I wanted to get some development from Ford, which is not coming. So then Malcom said: ‘I can’t give you what you want, so I think we’re going to have to split for now.'”
Fourmaux had hoped to cap his time at Ford with his first WRC victory, but that dream remained unfulfilled. However, he found some consolation last weekend at Monza, where he defeated newly crowned world champion Thierry Neuville in the Masters Show.
“I think the story would have been really nice to get my first victory and maybe fight for a championship with them again. You know, to finish the story from where it starts to where it should finish.
But at the end, we need some support from Ford, so I think this is the right move,” Fourmaux concluded.
