Fourmaux recorded his third retirement of the WRC season. This time, the Frenchman was on a strong pace early on and fighting at the front of the gravel rally. But his challenge ended when a suspension failure struck on Friday afternoon.
Fourmaux rejoined the event on Saturday. On the final day, he tried to push for Super Sunday points, but ended up retiring for good before the last stage, as the team opted to preserve the car.
“We were first on the road (on Sunday) so we were doing a lot of sweeping for the rest of the field. We wanted to score some good Super Sunday points but unfortunately, it just wasn’t possible,” Fourmaux lamented.
He had shown flashes of speed earlier in the rally, but that offered little consolation.
“The whole weekend has been frustrating for us after the great start we had on Friday, but the broken suspension took us out of the fight for the lead as well as made it really difficult to score any points.”
“Despite this, we can still take away a lot of positives; the car has the pace and we got to know these Hankook tyres. We will now shift our focus to a strong weekend at Rally Italia Sardegna,” Fourmaux said, turning his attention to the next event.
Fourmaux received words of encouragement from Hyundai team principal Cyril Abiteboul, who confirmed the Friday failure was not the result of driver error.
“Adrien was also a contender before his suspension failure, which was beyond his control and shouldn’t have happened,” Abiteboul stated.
