Fourmaux competed in the Dévoluy Rally as early as the beginning of December. The rally is held in the very same surroundings as the WRC season-opening Monte Carlo Rally. The hub of the Dévoluy Rally is the small town of La Joue du Loup in the French Alps, from where the distance to the Monte Carlo Rally service park in Gap is just 40 kilometres.
In addition to the Dévoluy Rally, Fourmaux carried out “winter testing” in Central Finland, but that stint turned into gravel running on studded tyres due to poor weather conditions. Before the Monte Carlo Rally at the end of January, Hyundai will still test for one more day per driver in as realistic conditions as possible.
These are critical times for Hyundai and Fourmaux, as during the short winter break the team must raise its performance level in order to respond better to Toyota this year. Last season, Hyundai won only two rounds, while Toyota celebrated victory on 12 occasions.
At least in December, Fourmaux’s feeling with the development version of the Hyundai i20 N Rally1 car was relatively positive. Hyundai’s car last year had its own pitfalls, which the team tried by all means to resolve, but with rather limited success. Now the car is still being fine-tuned in an effort to make it more competitive ahead of the final season of Rally1 machinery.
“It’s behaving a bit differently. So I really tried to go as close as possible in terms of feelings. I think it’s going to be difficult to achieve, but we’re going to try to work on it,” Fourmaux told RallyJournal.com in December.
In Monte Carlo, Toyota’s Sébastien Ogier is once again the clear favourite, but already last year Fourmaux finished an impressive third in his Hyundai debut in the iconic rally. If everything falls into place, Fourmaux could challenge the home hero even more strongly.
“It was quite positive. Ee still have some job to do but Monte Carlo is not tomorrow. We still have some days of testing,” Fourmaux said.
“So at least it’s going in the right direction, so I’m quite positive with that. So still some work for sure. We try to really figure out what is wrong with one thing on the car and when we will sort it, then I think it’s going to be okay.”
The Monte Carlo Rally will be run in the French Alps from 21 to 25 January.
