The M-Sport Ford rally team got a bit of a makeover in more ways than one ahead of the 2023 season, debuting a new livery for the Puma Rally1 racer and a revamped driver lineup to boot. After a bit of an up and down season, more changes are on the horizon heading into the upcoming 2024 season as well – most notably, another driver lineup change highlighted by the departure of the highly successful Ott Tänak, along with a brand new livery for the M-Sport Puma Rally1 racer to accompany those changes, too. Now, it seems as if the Puma Rally1 itself is in line for additional updates aside from the way it looks, according to Motorsport.com.
Monte testing underway with @AdrienFourmaux @AlexandreCoria 🇫🇷🇲🇨 pic.twitter.com/j5n7T3Uplv
— M-Sport (@MSportLtd) January 14, 2024
At least one update has been spotted while the M-Sport Ford Puma Rally1 was testing at Monte Carlo ahead of the 2024 WRC season opener in that particular location later this month – a new rear wing, which is expected to find its way onto the racer at some point later this year. However, according to M-Sport team principal Richard Millener, it’s just one of several changes in store for the Blue Oval rally racer in the coming months.
“We will still be developing the car, and we have a development plan,” Millener said. “There are a limited amount of developments each team can do, but our plan is to do as much as we are allowed. I read a lot of stuff about us not developing and not testing, which is not the case. We are probably giving our drivers the most testing as both our drivers will have two days each before Monte Carlo. We are doing everything we can. We are working on a new rear wing, which people have seen, that will come in a few rallies time, so we are still pushing ahead. It is difficult to compete against the others, but I don’t use that as an excuse because we still won two rallies last year, so the car is good enough to win.”
“There was a culmination of completely different things last year that came together, and we had a run of two or three bad rallies, and that is what cost our championship hopes,” he added. “We know we need to get better at that and reliability cost us despite the reasons for the reliability being very different. We know we need to get better at that, and we have promised that this is one of the main things we are working on to get right. We know we can do that as the previous season [2022] the car was good, we just need to get back there.”
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