After debuting a brand new livery for its Puma Rally1 racer and a revamped driver lineup, the M-Sport Ford FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) team has since gone on to experience some success early in the 2024 season. In the season-opening Rally Monte Carlo, Adrien Fourmaux and Alex Coria wound up finishing fifth overall, and the duo followed up that solid result with a third-place podium finish at Rally Sweden last month, too, setting M-Sport Ford up for the next event on the docket – Safari Rally Kenya, which is set to take place this coming weekend.
Safari Rally Kenya has developed a reputation for being not only unique among the various global locations on the WRC calendar, but also for the unpredictable and unforgivable conditions it throws at teams, too. Typically, those teams must deal with soaring temperatures and torrential rain, which poses some unique challenges in terms of tire selection, specifically, as things can go from dry to extremely muddy in a short period of time.
As such, teams are set to make some unique changes to their cars for Kenya, and that will certainly be the case with M-Sport Ford. These tweaks including raising the ride height of the Puma Rally1 racer, and teams are also permitted to use a modified air intake with a snorkel to help tackle deep water crossings, preventing dust and water from entering into the engine itself and potentially cutting the race short as a result. Regardless, the M-Sport Ford team and Fourmaux are ready to tackle that challenge, fresh off the driver’s first-ever career podium finish just a few weeks ago, which has him sitting in third place in the championship points race as well.
“I’m really pleased to be back in Kenya! I missed it last year, but I had quite a good result in 2021,” Fourmaux said. “The feeling and the atmosphere of this rally, with the wildlife and the amazing people living there, is really special. We know it’s going to be a tough event with the rainy season, and I think we’ll see a very different Kenya than in the last few years. There are many things that can happen on this event this year, so let’s see and try to deliver a good result on this rally. We want to try to keep third in the championship, keeping close to the others, that’s the main goal for now.”
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