M-Sport World Rally Team’s Elfyn Evans made a promising start to the 2015 FIA World Rally Championship at Rallye Monte-Carlo at the weekend.
Despite suffering some misfortune on the penultimate day of competition, the team is encouraged by the speed, potential and never-give-up attitude of their young charges.
Evans and co-driver Daniel Barritt finished the event in a solid seventh place but it could have been so much more. The Welshman was in a strong fifth place – chasing fourth – when he clipped a wall through “Prunieres – Embrun 2” (SS11) and damaged the rear suspension of his Ford Fiesta RS WRC.
Before the event Evans commented that he wanted to increase his speed on all 13 rounds of this year’s championship; and so far it is mission accomplished. The Welshman may be lacking experience of this notoriously difficult event, but he overcame that – proving that he has the ability to challenge towards the head of the field with a third fastest time through “La Salle en Beaumont – Corps 1” (SS3) as well as a number of fastest split times.
Elfyn Evans (7th) said, “There’s a feeling of what could have been at the end of this event. The potential was definitely there to do more, but there were a couple of silly mistakes on my part – one of which was extremely costly. We had some very good tyre choices throughout the weekend, but then again some weren’t quite so good so there are some things to learn.
“Overall the speed has been good and that is definitely a big positive that we can take from this weekend. We can also see where we went wrong which is important for the future and I’m looking forward to coming back and having another go at the event next year.”
The famous event was dominated by the 1,2 and 3 placed Volkswagen Polo cars with Citroens and Hyundai cars also beating the Fiestas.
