Mendacity on a bench within the workforce truck was a shiny picture from this yr’s Monte Carlo Rally. It’s from the Saint-Léger-les-Mélèzes stage – “You understand, the one the place Tänak, Taka and so forth went off on the ice? However I knew to watch out there,” he defined.
Come the end of the rally, he kneeled earlier than the Puma and gave it a farewell kiss. This goodbye contained an emotional high quality. Transferring to Hyundai was not a financial determination – although in a unique sense, it additionally was.
“We had been ready for some name from Ford and it by no means got here,” Fourmaux defined.
“Then in some unspecified time in the future, I had a name with Malcolm [Wilson, M-Sport managing director] and Malcolm mentioned: ‘Sorry Adrien, however I can’t afford you. So yeah, thanks, and we’ll see you subsequent yr with Hyundai overalls’. Total, it was extra like that than simply saying to Malcom: ‘Ciao-ciao.’”
Fourmaux had made a number of journeys backwards and forwards to Ford Efficiency’s North Carolina facility to work on the Puma in a simulator setting. There was frustration on the Puma’s efficiency in the direction of the top of the season which flared up with a disappointing Central European Rally, crashing out amid technical troubles.
M-Sport’s circumstances making it unable to maintain tempo with Toyota and Hyundai’s growth tempo meant each events understood they wouldn’t stay a partnership into 2025.
