Top ten finishes for Irish crews on tricky Rally Estonia

Top ten finishes for Irish crews on tricky Rally Estonia

Jon Armstrong and Shane Byrne led the Irish contingent at Rally Estonia, securing a ninth-place overall finish for the M-Sport Ford World Rally Team.

The crew’s Rally1 campaign faced an early setback on Friday when they went wide over a jump on the opening stage and suffered a puncture.

“It was a bit of a tricky start to the rally, we had the tyre debead on the first stage, over the jump, and then we struggled to make back the time we’d lost,” Armstrong said. “But even without that we’d only have gained one position; the difference was the road position we lost going into Saturday, and we don’t know how much we could have gained with that. Overall we’re happy with the pace.”

Josh McErlean and Eoin Treacy showed strong Friday pace, finishing the opening day eighth overall. However, an exhaust manifold failure on Saturday forced their temporary retirement before restarting on Sunday to finish 43rd.

“It was a bit frustrating, obviously, what happened on Saturday, but our pace on Friday was nice,” McErlean said. “Sunday was a bit of a struggle starting first on the road, but we’ll keep learning and we have plenty of positives to take into Finland.”

Among the co-drivers, Aaron Johnston guided Takamoto Katsuta through a difficult weekend of road opening after Friday tyre damage.

“This weekend did not go the way that we had hoped,” Katsuta said. “We knew that Friday could be difficult with our road position but our pace was not bad and I think we were doing our job quite well until we had to stop.”

James Fulton also reached the finish line alongside driver Yuki Yamamoto after a Saturday incident.

“Glad to have made it to the end of WRC Rally Estonia !!” Fulton said. “We showed strong pace throughout the weekend and other than our unfortunate off yesterday evening we had a solid performance overall.”