Jon Armstrong reflects on the two moments that defined his result at Rally Paraguay saying that he had a good performance with his Ford Puma Rally1 in some stages last weekend.
Armstrong had a DNF at Rally Paraguay which was held last weekend. The Irishman reported understeer with his car at the end of Stage 1 while he was fifth overall behind his teammate Josh McErlean for two seconds after the end of Stage 2, but he dropped to sixth after the end of Stage 3 as he got a front right puncture. In fact, the flailing tyre destroyed the brake lines resulting in hitting a bank and having a spin later in SS3. On the next stage, he was worried about the water temperature as he had no power. His mechanics managed to fix his car for the second loop of Friday, but he received time penalties as he left the service area with a 14-minute delay which means that he dropped to outside the top ten. In Stage 7, he stopped at 7,9Km into SS7 to change a puncture, but he bounced back on Saturday morning by ending this loop at tenth as he set two stage times which were inside the top four. On Saturday afternoon, he stayed out of trouble and was able to gain only one position meaning that he completed the day at ninth. Although he managed to steal Gus Greensmith's eight place and to be behind the seventh Diego Dominguez for only one tenth of a second after Stage 18, Armstrong was forced to retire from the seventh place on the road section after Stage 20 as he ran wide and touched a bank which had as a result to break the rear left left suspension. Despite his retirement, Armstrong showed a good pace with the car in Paraguay and this is very promising for Rally Chile which will be held next week.
"We had quite a good start on Friday with some good times, but then we got a puncture that we drove on, which ended up damaging the brakes", Armstrong said.
"Then we spun and damaged the car.
"Friday ended up losing us a lot of time with the repairs we needed to do in service.
"Then Saturday was a strong day, with some good stage times, and we clawed our way back up to seventh on Sunday.
"Then, three stages from the end, we came to a section that changed surface slightly.
"We didn’t have quite as much grip as we were expecting, so we went a bit wide, touched a bank and broke the rear suspension.
"So, yeah, really frustrating not to get a result.
"It’s a bit tricky at the moment because there have been a few results that we’ve missed out on, but we’re going to try and do our best to finish out the year strong now, with Chile coming up next".
Photo Credits: M-Sport
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