You’re an FIA European champion in your first season competing in the ERC. How good does that feel?
“I’m a European champion! It’s a great title to have and it will help for next season so thumbs up to us for what we do next year. But this was a super-hard event, new stages, new everything. I’d never driven on something similar to these stages so there was a lot to learn.”
Before next year you have your ERC Fiesta Rally3 Trophy prize drive on the WRC Central European Rally to look forward to. What does the chance to drive for M-Sport mean to you?
“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 and get a good result.”
You mention budget, is that an issue for you?
“Well, we couldn’t make a mistake here [in Wales] because we don’t have much budget or time to go to Poland [for the ERC finale]. We had to get [the title] done here so there was a bunch of pressure on that side. But from the start of the final day we wanted that third place so we really pushed. I almost catch the second place, but we had one job to do [by finishing third] and we did it.”
The ERC Fiesta Rally3 Trophy was a new initiative from M-Sport Poland in conjunction with WRC Promoter, Pirelli and Gulf Race Fuels for this year. How good was it?
“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.”
And what about your British co-driver Tom Woodburn. How will did he perform this season?
“Tom was perfect every race, I can’t say a single thing he did wrong. I’m happy to have him in the car, hopefully we’ll do more wins together.”
The WRC Central European Rally takes place from 17 - 20 October.
Europe
Poland
China