With an overnight lead of 12.6 seconds in his back pocket, Sebastian Ogier spent Saturday gradually building his advantage to 24.4 seconds with one stage remaining. Running in 10^th position on the road, his final stage was run in darkness and he conceded 4.1 seconds to his second placed teammate Elfyn Evans, leaving the eight-time champion with 20.3 seconds with three Sunday stages remaining.

“I tried to manage the risk, which is not easy in Monte-Carlo,” the eight-time world champion reflected. “In these conditions you need to be prepared to lose a bit of time.”

Evans and co-driver Scott Martin were involved in a frenetic battle with Hyundai’s new signing Adrien Fourmaux and Alex Coria for second position overall. Fourmaux ended Friday’s action just 1.6 seconds behind the GR Yaris crew.

Saturday’s first stage saw the warring drivers tied on time. On stage 11, Fourmaux pipped Evans and took second place by half a second which became 2.8 seconds on the final stage of the morning loop.

The Welshman put his head down and re-took his runner-up place with a 1.7 second gap to the Frenchman but on the penultimate stage, the positions changed yet again, with Fourmaux 0.7 seconds ahead.

With light fading fast on the final stage, Evans did what he had to do and blitzed Fourmaux’s time to end the day with a 4.8 second advantage.

While the focus was on the fight for second, Ott Tänak and Martin Järveoja wrung the neck of their Hyundai, taking four stage wins to move to within 2.5 seconds of the podium. He’d closed in on Kalle Rovanperä during the morning loop, narrowing the gap to one second before surging ahead after the midday service.

After completing the final stage on Friday, Grégoire Munster and Louis Louka were forced to retire from the rally after encountering an electrical problem on the way back to the service park. The M-Sport Ford crew repaired the car and Munster thanked them by claiming his first ever WRC stage win, powering his Puma to the fastest time on the day’s opening stage by 0.8 seconds, beating Ogier and Rovanperä.

“Really good feeling”, beamed Munster. “Everyone was a bit gutted yesterday but I think this is a really big thank you for them, all the team that worked really hard last night. Years of commitment and work that finally get a reward, it is a very nice feeling.”

Rovanperä prefers fast, open stages and he was struggling to find the time, and ended the day in fifth, one position up on his flu-ridden teammate Takamoto Katsuta and Aaron Johnston, who set the fastest time on stage 12.

Sami Pajari continued his considered approach to the tricky rally, and held a solid seventh overall while the other novice, Josh McErlean entered the top ten in ninth place at the end of the longest day of the rally.

Neuville’s woes persisted in the morning when a mysterious power loss slowed him 1.4km into the opening stage. A quick system reset restored performance, but by that point the Belgian had already leaked another 50sec.

“I had to do a reset. The car went and then I lost the power like in Japan, we thought the trouble was gone. In the situation we were in we said to do a reset and we were fine since. No idea, no alarm, nothing. Now it is working,’ Neuville reported.

The three problem’s Neuville encountered over Friday and Saturday left the Belgian over five minutes off the lead.

In WRC2, Nikolay Gryazin held tenth but wasn’t eligible to score points, leaving Yohan Rossel with more than 2 minutes in hand over Gus Greensmith.

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Chasing his record-breaking 10^th Rallye Monte Carlo victory, Sebastian Ogier and Vincent Landais slithered their Toyota Gazoo Racing GR Yaris to the top of the leaderboard after the first full day of action at the opening round of the FIA World Rally Championship.

The six stages – five were run after SS5 was cancelled due a spectator medical event – had it all. Dry tarmac, wet tarmac, wet mud, and of course, black ice, making grip levels unpredictable at best and a nerve-wracking lottery at worst. Teams had a wide array of Hankook’s new rubber to choose from and countless variations abounded. Full studs, studded crossed with full winter, or even super-soft rubber all round.

Kalle Rovanpera and Jonne Halttunen set the timing sheets alight and set the benchmark time on stage four, but the most impressive drive came from Grégoire Munster/Louis Louka in the their M-Sport Ford Puma,  only 1.4 seconds behind the double WRC Champion.

All the top runners had the same storyline; difficult to predict how much and where, grip was available.

Stage six saw the first of several incidents: Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe arrived at a sharp right-hand corner and couldn’t slow down enough. The Hyundai slithered over a mound on the apex of the corner which pitched the i20 N into a ditch on the opposite side of the road. The left-rear corner was wrecked, but the reigning champion dragged his car through the rest of the stage and back to the service park.

 “I think we paid the price for not having enough experience with the tyre for the dry section, it felt like the tyre was quite stable then suddenly I lost the brakes, saw the ditch and lost the rear’”, the Belgian explained.

Hyundai teammate Ott Tanak and Martin Järveoja also had a moment, understeering into a ditch, missing a pole by inches and running along the ditch until he could floor the throttle to get back on to the road. At the stage end, after surveying what was left of his car, the Estonian said: “There is a lot missing but I am happy to be here. Some black ice was there.”

Ogier too, had a moment, a briefly ‘ditched’ his GR Yaris as well, but he got away with it. Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen went off in exactly the same place as Ogier, pulling a tyre off the rim.

Adrien Fourmaux/Alex Coria won the stage with another team-leader-esque drive from Munster, who went second quickest, beating such luminaries as Ogier, rally leader Elfyn Evans, Rovanpera and Tanak.

The afternoon loop went relatively quietly, except for Evans and Neuville. The Welshman had a spin in SS8. “I was proper steady, it just started to go and I couldn’t recover. I was on the ice, we just went a margin too far, we were almost there. We had the information, it was Bambi on ice,” he shrugged.

The spin cost Evans the lead which was now in Ogier’s hands.

Neville had a carbon copy incident on SS9 at the same corner as his stage six faux pas. This time though, he’d suffered a puncture beforehand but with the same result, bouncing over the mound and across the road into the same ditch nose first, albeit without further damage. He elaborated: “I was punctured far before, left front puncture since the beginning. We tried to go as far and as fast as we could but at some time the tyre just went and we went straight again.”

It was a French one-two in stages eight and nine with Ogier heading Fourmaux on the timesheets. At the close of business, Ogier led teammate Evans by 12.6 seconds with Fourmaux threateningly close, 1.6 seconds back in third.

Rovanpera, Tanak and Munster rounded out the top six.

In WRC2, Yohan and Leo Rossel’s Citroen C3s sandwiched Eric Camilli’s Hyundai, although Nikolay Gryazin – who is not registered to score points on this round – was keeping Skoda’s flag flying, 21.4 seconds behind Rossel (Y).

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M-Sport Ford has revealed a striking new livery for its Puma Rally1 ahead of the 2024 FIA World Rally Championship which starts in Monte Carlo in two weeks time.

The British squad lifted the covers off the latest version of its Puma, which will be driven by youngsters Adrien Fourmaux, who hails from France, and Luxembourger Grégoire Munster.

The updated Puma once again carries significant backing from Red Bull and features a white base with striking blue flashes. M-Sport and Ford branding is prominent across the car along with the logos of key sponsors including Castrol, SafetyCulture, Sparco and Fleetback.

Fourmaux returns to the WRC’s top-flight having spent much of the 2022 season focused on WRC2 and British Rally Championship campaigns. The 28-year-old drove a Puma at last year’s season finale in Japan but retired on the second stage after going off the road in extreme weather conditions.

 Munster had his Rally1 debut in Chile and secured a commendable seventh-place finish at the Central European Rally shortly after. The 2024 season marks his first full-time year WRC1, and he is eager to make a lasting impression.

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M-Sport Ford World Rally Team has announced that Adrien Fourmaux and Alex Coria, and Grégoire Munster and Louis Louka will form its line-up for the 2024 World Rally Championship, both driving the Ford Puma Hybrid Rally1.

Both Fourmaux and Munster, who enjoyed seasons of strong development in 2023 in the Rally1 and WRC2 categories, will step up in 2024 to take on the full WRC season. The pair represent M-Sport’s continued commitment of nurturing future talent into upcoming rally and championship winners. The team is very excited to continue working with Fourmaux and Munster in their quest to achieve important and new career milestones in 2024.

Both drivers have experience in the Ford Puma Rally1 and will aim to utilise this familiarity with the car to launch straight into action on the season opener in Monte-Carlo in January.

Adrien Fourmaux’s highly anticipated return to the Rally1 category comes off the back of a very successful year for the French driver. His highest accolade in 2023 is certainly his British Rally Championship title. His consistency in the BRC would also support his further success in the WRC2 category. A win just out of reach in Sardinia was soon redeemed by claiming a well-earned second overall on the famously fast Finnish gravel stages. He rounded off his WRC2 season with a dominant RC2 class win on Central European Rally’s debut event in October.

A new face to most of the team at the start of 2023, Grégoire Munster now finds himself well established within the M-Sport contingent. A successful and very consistent year for the Luxembourger, Munster is in the position to be one of the most promising young drivers in the 2024 season.

His achievements to date include two Belgian Junior titles plus a number of top-five WRC2 finishes since his category debut in 2022. Since his maiden event in the Ford Fiesta Rally2 on Rallye Monte-Carlo in January 2023, Munster would make steady progression throughout the season, culminating in a WRC2 Challenger win in Greece. Earlier in the season he also took the category win in Junior WRC in Estonia, behind the wheel of a Fiesta Rally3.

Munster would then impress fans and the team on his debut Rally1 events in Chile and Central Europe. He fought hard to get onto good terms with the Puma in Chile and saw this come true on his preferred Tarmac surface traversing three countries in Central Europe, as he would claim an overall fourth-fastest time and his best overall time on a WRC stage to date.

The 24-year-old’s career so far exemplifies M-Sport’s progression pyramid as he climbs through the categories, honing his knowledge, instinct and speed to bring him to the next opportunity – a full WRC season at the top level. He continues his partnership with co-driver Louis Louka, and the pair will further their learning in the Puma and focus their sights on a consistent season building speed and experience across all the varied surfaces the WRC has to offer.

Both crews will line up their newly liveried Pumas at the start ramp on Rallye Monte-Carlo next month. The team’s reputation for unique and breath-taking designs will keep fans on the edge of their seats until the new livery is launched at the Autosport International Show, UK, on Friday 12th January.

Richard Millener, Team Principal, said:
“2024 will see us take a new and different approach compared to the last 12 months. Developing and helping young talent prove themselves is an exciting way to tackle a WRC season, and with several of the top drivers not competing across the full championship we have opportunities to put in some strong and surprising performances. We still have all the ingredients to deliver results and the team is motivated to start again in a few weeks’ time with an almost blank paper on what we can achieve.

“Adrien, Alex, Gregoire and Louis are all great guys who possess a lot of determination and motivation. A young team can create great energy and great things can come from that so I cannot wait to start working with them all again to show what we know we can achieve.”

Adrien Fourmaux said:
“I’m very happy to be back in Rally1 for 2024. Achieving this drive was the main goal of the 2023 season and I’m thrilled to return for a full season in the Puma next year. I’m grateful to M-Sport, Ford and Red Bull for having the confidence and trust in me to give me another year at the top level and allow me to show my capabilities.

“I’ve enjoyed being part of the development of the Fiesta Rally2 in 2023, and I think this will help me for the upcoming season with the Rally1 car. It will be a very interesting season for everybody, especially with the new regulations and points system.

“We’ve got a proper plan to work hard and deliver the best results we can, to support the team and get it back to where it deserves to be. I’m also very proud to be the the only French driver competing the full season at the top level of WRC!”

Grégoire Munster said:
“Driving almost the full season in WRC2 in 2023 has been a big positive, it’s the first time I had the chance to do nearly all the WRC events and get the mileage. The two drives in the Puma has helped me a lot with getting prepared for the Rally1 drive in 2024. Working within the M-Sport team has also been incredibly useful, you see the WRC2 and Rally1 team all within the same structure, so it’s good preparation for Rally1 to feel familiar and at home!

“I’m eager to start in Monte-Carlo, and the goal for 2024 will be first to get some good results and increase the pace rally after rally, try not to make any mistakes and just get all the experience. We’re driving against world champions, so it will be a big challenge but I’m really looking forward to it.”

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