We are still learning the car, says Gaurav Gill; Greensmith closes on the win: WRC2
M-Sport Ford World Rally Team’s Gus Greensmith and Elliott Edmondson are back in the lead of the FIA World Rally Championship’s premier support series – leading the way in the WRC 2 Pro category with their Ford Fiesta R5 Mk II.
The new Fiesta secured its maiden victory in the hands of Anders Grøndal at Norway’s Rally Tron last weekend, and Greensmith continues to showcase the power and performance of M-Sport’s latest global rally car at this weekend’s Rally Turkey.
Despite picking up a puncture through the early stages (SS3), the young Brit rebounded with stage-winning pace throughout the weekend – now holding more than a minute’s lead with just 38.59 competitive kilometres left to contest.
In the WRC 2 category, Gaurav Gill and Glenn MacNeall were back in action and getting to grips with the notoriously challenging terrain. The pairing showed good speed, but their bad luck continued into the second day of competition with two punctures (SS10 and SS11) and a broken damper on the penultimate speed test (SS12).
Gus Greensmith said: “It’s been a much better day for us today. We took a bit of a gamble this afternoon with only one spare and just pushed as much as we could which really paid off. We’ve jumped into a good lead in WRC 2 Pro now, and from where we were after the second stage on Friday [when we lost time having to stop and change a puncture] I’d say we’re doing pretty well.”
Gaurav Gill said: “We were still learning the car in the first stage morning, but had some good speed in the next ones and I was happy with the confidence and the feeling of the car. We wanted to build on that over the second loop but unfortunately we had an issue with the damper which meant we had to cruise through the last stage and get the car back to service in one piece. I guess that’s the nature of this event and that these things can happen, but overall I think it’s been a positive day and we can be happy with the speed.”
