The 21-year-old was contesting his home round of the FIA European Rally Championship for the first time. But he came through an event made even more challenging by changeable weather conditions to clinch the one-make title and the accompanying prize drive on October’s WRC Central European Rally in an M-Sport Poland Ford Fiesta Rally3 run on Pirelli tyres.
Kohn said: “Having factory team support is really big for us and it also helps the budget quite a lot because WRC is quite expensive for us and we needed this. It’s also nice to start the Central European Rally in Prague, my home city. I’m looking forward to meeting the fans and I hope to do a good job.”
The five-round ERC Fiesta Rally3 Trophy was a new initiative from M-Sport Poland in conjunction with WRC Promoter for the 2024 season and provided drivers with a package of incentives from Pirelli and Gulf Race Fuels – in addition to the Central European Rally prize drive.
“I am really happy to win this Trophy,” said Kohn, who was co-driven by Briton Tom Woodburn. “We didn’t know at the start of the year what to do because WRC3 rules were changed to seven races and that wasn’t in our budget. The ERC was and I’m super-happy we did this Trophy and I hope we represented the ERC well.”
Kohn needed to finish Barum Czech Rally Zlín to beat 19-year-old Turkish rival Kerem Kazaz to the ERC Fiesta Trophy title. He explained how a carefully planned strategy made it possible.
“It was calm because we drove calmly,” Kohn said. “We’ve got all these people saying we drive quite slow but this is championship driving, it’s something different and we have to learn this as well. Although we took it steadily through the stages we tried to push a little bit on the last stage to get a good feeling at the end of the rally and it worked out quite well. I’m happy, we’re champions and now we need to carry this to Wales and win the title of ERC3. That’s what we want to do so let’s focus on [Rali Ceredigion] and the Central European Rally.”
Of his partnership with 30-year-old co-driver Woodburn, Kohn said: “Tom was perfect like every race, I can’t say a single thing he did wrong in the rally. I’m happy to have him in the car, hopefully we’ll do more wins together and let’s see what we can do in Wales.” Rali Ceredigion takes place from 30 August - 1 September.
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