Starting the second leg from second place overall, the Frenchman was right on the heels of rally leader Sébastien Ogier after the first stage of the day. But things quickly unravelled for Fourmaux, who ran into a streak of bad luck.
On the middle stage of the loop, a puncture cost him dearly – nearly four minutes in total.
“We didn’t really react as we should. I think we should have changed the tyre from the beginning. But at the same time, it was quite smooth at the start, so you feel that it’s okay and you can carry on. But as soon as the tyre was gone, it was really hard on the car,” Fourmaux explained.
“I didn’t want to break anything, so we decided to stop. But then by stopping, we were close to Seb. Then we had a blue flag, so we had to let him pass. So that was messy.”
The drama wasn’t over. On the final stage of the morning, Fourmaux encountered an even more unusual scenario. After a crest, he was thrown off the road and ended up charging through a field at full speed for several hundred metres before managing to return to the stage.
“I was surprised by one jump. To be fair, it pushed me out of the line. After that, I just decided to avoid going back on the road because I knew there were some rocks and trees between this small road and the field.”
“It was going up and down, so I couldn’t really see where I was. I just knew that the road was on the right. Well, it was like a slalom,” Fourmaux chuckled.
Later on the same stage, he went off the road again after missing a braking point in a corner he overshot badly.
“On the last stage, there was a lot of dust coming inside the cockpit. I was distracted and asked Alex (co-driver Alexandre Coria), ‘Is your door closed?’ And then I forgot the next braking point.”
Fourmaux is now ninth in the standings, nearly five minutes off Ogier’s lead. Three more stages remain on Saturday.
