Tom Williams continued his strong start to the 2019 FIA Junior World Rally Championship with a fifth-place finish on the Tour de Corse last weekend.
Williams set a string of consistent stage times throughout the three-day event and he recovered to fifth after picking up a double puncture early on Saturday morning that dropped him at one point to eighth in class.
After stopping to change one of the damaged tyres, a fast time through the following stage moved him back up to sixth before he then regained fifth by the end of the opening loop on Saturday where he stayed until the end of the event.
His fifth place finish in Corsica followed a strong start to the season in Sweden where he took fourth and he now sits sixth in the championship standings after the opening pair of events in the Junior WRC.
Williams finished fifth on the 2019 Tour de Corse after recovering from a puncture. Photo Credit: Tom Williams Rallying
Williams said on his result: “I’m really happy to finish fifth on the Tour of Corsica, because it’s such a big event and there is so much to learn. Friday’s stages were all new for us and the roads were wide, very fast and bumpy; quite different from the Shakedown stage we’d done the previous day, so our set-up wasn’t quite right.”
“We were on the pace, but it was a very tricky day – plus, with no service during the day, we had to be really careful not to make a mistake and to manage our tyres wisely. We had a clean day, everything went to plan, and we finished it in fifth position in what’s an extremely competitive Junior World Rally Championship category this year.”
He added: “I’m leaving Corsica a lot more confident about driving on asphalt now. It’s been such a long and tough rally, we’ve made so may set-up changes and driven on so many different types of road, when the set-up was right and when it was wrong!”
“To get so many asphalt miles at World Championship level under my belt has been a fantastic experience, and to come away with such a good result is the icing on the cake.”
Round three of the 2019 Junior WRC takes places as part of Rally Italia Sardegna between June 13-16.
