M-Sport Ford to do an emergency regroup next week after disastrous Ypres



The team principal of M-Sport Ford, Richard Millener, reveals that his team will hold a meeting next week to do a review for Ypres Rally, but he still stands by his drivers.

The British team had a catastrophic rally in Ypres last weekend as all of its drivers made mistakes.

First of all, its leading driver, Craig Breen, was fifth overall until the start of Stage 10 where he rolled his car 11.6 Km into the stage resulting in retiring for the day. However, his mechanics managed to repair his car for Sunday, but he did not score any point in Powerstage.

Gus Greensmith was off the pace all the weekend, but he dropped more time on Saturday morning as he stopped to change a wheel near the start of SS10 after running off the field. As a result of this impact, he damaged the rear left of his Puma and this was the reason why he started late in Stage 11 as he tried to make some repairs.

Finally, it looked like that Adrien Fourmaux was the only M-Sport driver who survived all the weekend, but he went off the road 1.9 Km into the penultimate stage of the rally and was forced to retire after his crash. Before he starts in Stage 19, he was fifth overall and was fighting with Oliver Solberg for the fourth place.

"It's part of rallying, that can happen, but to have the amount of bad luck we're having or mistakes that are being made is not good for anybody", Millener said.

"I still stand by the team, stand by the car, we've got to work together again, there's no point fighting internally with each other. 

"We need to get better results, simple as that.

"It's very difficult, you put the drivers under pressure to do better, that doesn't work. 

"You give them no pressure to just enjoy themselves, that hasn't worked.

"But it all links together, ultimately it's not just M-Sport there's a lot of partners to make this happen and if you want to be a complete negative person, then you could say that some of those partners decide that it's not working for them and the funding goes then it becomes very, very tricky for us. 

"Ultimately, they've got to work with us.

"The car won a WRC event so the car isn't bad.

"I wouldn't want to make any decisions right at the minute because when stuff like that happens your emotions can overtake what's potentially the best options.

"I think we need to certainly have a regroup at the start of the week but wait until then to decide anything, if there was anything".

Finally, he answered the question if his team will bring another driver: "No. 

"Not at the moment, no.

"We've got six cars entered in Greece, that's a big ask in itself. 

"So we need to sit down, we don't know what the damage is to Adrien's car, unfortunately it looks like it would have hit the telegraph pole, which would have done some damage for sure.

"But I think we just need a couple of days at the moment to sit down, regroup, look at the facts, not make any rash decisions and then go from there".


Source: Motorsport.com


Photo Credits: M-Sport

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