Fourmaux was unable to match the pace of Toyota’s Sébastien Ogier and Elfyn Evans on the stages that had dried out for the afternoon. However, the French driver was puzzled as to why the gap in pace grew so large. For example, on the day’s final stage, Fourmaux lost eight seconds to Ogier’s benchmark time.
“To be fair, I have not so much idea. I feel that I was doing a good pace and I was delivering a good driving, but the times are really not coming. Even in the last one, where the sweeping was quite good and I would expect to be faster, but actually not,” Fourmaux said.
“I think we are lacking quite a lot of traction. We need to work on it. It’s a shame, but let’s see tomorrow. It’s still a quite a long day. There is a big fight in front of us, so we never know what can happen. We have learned that also from Paraguay.”
In addition to Fourmaux, Thierry Neuville also ran into problems with his Hyundai. Neuville’s gap to the lead is already 41.7 seconds.
“I don’t know. I was pretty convinced that I made a very fast time on the last one but obviously the gap was massive, so I have no clue. Honestly,” Neuville summed up.
“I took a bit more risky tyre choice this afternoon. I expected more damp conditions and I also didn’t want to make the same choice as Adrian. To see if I could pull out a bit of an advantage in the damp stage. It worked in the damp stage, but the next one was drier than expected. Adrian was over the day, a bit quicker than me. Not the greatest day, but the battle with Adrian is on. So tomorrow I think we’re going to enjoy.”
One thing is certain: in the Hyundai camp on Saturday evening, every possible stone was turned in service in order to find a solution to the grip issues. However, it is difficult to make major set-up changes in the middle of a rally.
“Both drivers were really struggling soI think we need to work on the car and found a way. But we need to all together to find the solution for that. Because we cannot get stuck for this kind of conditions because the rallies are like that one day it’s dry and it’s damp, humid, wet. So we need to be good on all the conditions. I hope we will find something really soon and maybe for tomorrow,” Fourmaux told.
