Ford M-Sport driver Elfyn Evans wants to take the positives out of last weekend’s Tour de Corse after his puncture on the Power Stage denied him a second WRC win.
Welshman Evans ended up third in the results after leading Thierry Neuville and Sébastien Ogier going into the final stage, but a right-front puncture midway through the Calvi test forced him to drop over a minute in time.
Speaking after the event, Evans said: “It’s disappointing right now, but overall it’s been a really positive weekend and we know that we had the speed to win. The first stage this morning (on Sunday) felt really good, and we had a good rhythm going into the Power Stage.”
“I’m not sure exactly what happened, but it felt like we were in the middle of the road and just unfortunate to hit a stone or something in the line. Straight away I knew it didn’t sound good, and sure enough a couple of hundred metres later we got the puncture alarm.”
“We had 11 kilometres to go and I knew that if we stopped to change it we would lose a lot of positions. We decided to continue, and thankfully made it to the end to salvage a podium.”
Evans suffered a puncture midway through the final stage of the event. Photo Credit: Jaanus Ree/Red Bull Content Pool
Despite the setback, Evans has now finished on the podium in consecutive events after his third place in Mexico and he added about his start to the season: “Perhaps it’s not the result we wanted (in Corsica), but the pace is there and I think we can all take confidence from that moving forward.”
“We’ve had a pretty strong start to the season so far and I’ve been really happy with the Fiesta on all four of the opening rounds. The guys back at M-Sport are working exceptionally hard and making improvements all the time so I see no reason why we can’t continue this form into the coming events.”
The fifth round of the 2019 FIA World Rally Championship is Rally Argentina, which takes place between April 25-28.
