Adrien Fourmaux had every reason to be happy after the second round of the World Rally Championship (WRC) in Sweden: The Ford driver not only achieved the best result of his WRC career to date, but also achieved third place overall behind winner Esapekka Lappi (Hyundai) and Elfyn Evans (Toyota) also took the first podium.
For Fourmaux, this was a long-awaited dream come true. “This shows that you can [das Podium] “One day you can achieve it if you never give up,” says the 28-year-old Frenchman happily. “If you believe in a dream, you just have to follow it and ignore the people who tell you that you can’t achieve it.”
Already, after the second of 13 World Championship races, Fourmaux has collected more points than in his first full Rally1 season in 2022. Last year, the Frenchman was then moved back to M-Sport’s Rally2 program before this year gets a second chance in the top class of the World Rally Championship.
Fourmaux is “very happy with it”
“It’s really great. It’s only my fourth rally on snow, so I can be really proud of it,” says Fourmaux in an interview with the English-language edition of Motorsport.com, a sister platform of Motorsport-Total.com on the Motorsport Network. “It’s my first podium in the premier class on the second rally of my Rally1 comeback, so I’m very happy with it.”
The result was also an important step forward for the overall ranking. “We’re third in the championship, that’s crazy,” beams the Ford driver. “There’s still a long way to go but I’m really happy because we had a lot of conditions with the snow and sometimes we didn’t have a good position on the track and to get on the podium after all that is fantastic.”
“To be honest, my goal was fifth place and if I had finished there I would have been happy,” admits Fourmaux. “But to be second on Saturday and then third is great.”
A moment of shock costs second place overall
On the eleventh stage, Fourmaux achieved the fourth best time in his career. A little later he had to deal with a moment of shock when he collided with a snowdrift on the 15th stage. The 28-year-old Frenchman then decided not to engage in a fight with Evans and fell back to third place at the finish.
“I’m usually a pretty calm person, so I don’t want to have the feeling that everything is fine and we’re going to get a lot of podium places,” Fourmaux remains realistic after his podium debut. “There’s one in the bag, but I have to prepare for the next rallies.”