Adrien Fourmaux was one of the positive surprises of the recently ended WRC season. In the season of his return to the top category of rallying, he impressed everyone with his results with the Ford Puma Rally1, which was increasingly lagging behind in competitive development compared to the Toyota Yaris and Hyundai i20N.
His speed has been recognised for a few seasons, but what distinguishes a good driver from a top driver is the consistency with which he can show it. That's something Adrien has done this season, where he has achieved five podiums and eight top-five finishes in fourteen races. But above all, he has greatly improved his decision-making skills and emotional control, which has helped to drastically reduce the number of accidents. In 2022, before M-Sport demoted him to their WRC2 team, he spent almost half the season on the side of the road watching others pass due to accidents, something that earned him the nickname Adrien ‘Defourmaux’ at the time by some people in this podcast.
Adrien started in the world of rallying in 2017, where he took part in the French junior championship with a Ford Fiesta R2T, finishing third in the championship. In 2018, he took part again and won all the races he entered, becoming champion. It's worth noting that the competition wasn't bad and his biggest rival was Mathieu Franceschi, a driver who was runner-up in the European Rally Championship this year!
With the support of the French Federation, in the 2019 season he took part in some WRC2 races with a Ford Fiesta R5, which was quite a competitive leap. He went from the French junior championship to competing in an all-wheel drive car with almost three hundred horsepower in the world championship for cars in this category. The results were modest, but they served to give him experience at a higher level, as well as some races in France.
In 2020, he started racing in the colours of M-Sport, the team that races Ford cars. The responsibility of delivering good results increased, and the Frenchman did just that. Although the season was haunted by the pandemic, he took part in WRC2 and also did a few races in the ERC (European Rally Championship). He finished third in WRC2 and took his first overall victory in an international level in a ERC event, winning the Islas Canarias Rally. It was a good season that made him one of the most promising drivers in the world of rallying at the time.
For the following season, bigger flights awaited him! In 2021, Adrien Fourmaux was promoted to the main team for a partial programme in the WRC, participating for the rest of the season in the WRC2, sharing the car in both championships with Teemu Suninen, who was in a downward spiral within M-Sport due to poor results and lack of sponsorship funds.
The season kicked off with a podium in WRC2 at the Monte Carlo Rally, followed by a less positive outing at the Arctic Rally. But on the third race, it was time for his WRC debut at the Croatian Rally. At the age of twenty-six, with little experience accumulated in just forty-seven races over four seasons, he arrived at the highest level. His debut was very positive, with fifth place, beating team-mate Gus Greensmith by almost a minute and ahead of other regular drivers in the championship, such as Craig Breen and Takamoto Katsuta. At the next round, in Portugal, he had another good race, finishing sixth behind Gus Greensmith. However, the M-Sport duo fell well behind the competition because of the Ford Fiesta WRC's lack of competitiveness. For the rest of the season he continued to have some interesting results, especially in Kenya, where he finished fifth and won his first stage. But there were also mistakes and accidents that jeopardised his participations in Belgium, Catalunya and Monza.
In 2022, the new regulations for Rally1 cars came into force and M-Sport's expectations were high given the team's tendency to show good results at the start of new regulation cycles, but they ended up losing the development war to Toyota and Hyundai, who had bigger budgets. To this end, they hired Craig Breen to lead the Ford Puma Rally1 armada, with Gus Greensmith and Adrien Fourmaux as second line drivers, with the mission of winning the most points for the British team, leaving Craig Breen the task of fighting for higher ground. Nine-time world champion Sébastien Loeb has joined the team for a partial season with the support of Red Bull, to help develop the car. Pierre-Louis Loubet, another promising young Frenchman, also competed with the team, albeit as a private driver.
The season got off to a disastrous start for Adrien Fourmaux when he had a brutal accident on the third stage of the Monte Carlo Rally, which sent the chassis of his Ford Puma straight into the rubbish heap. In the second round, in Sweden, a breakdown prevented him from completing the race. In Croatia, a new accident on the third stage kept the driver with a string of retirements. In Portugal, he was only ninth but scored his first points of the season. From then on, only in Estonia and Catalonia did he manage to finish in the points. A mistake in Kenya, mechanical problems in Finland and an accident in Belgium led M-Sport to make the difficult decision for the 2023 season: Adrien Fourmaux was demoted to WRC2 for 2023 and would compete again with a Ford Fiesta Rally2, in an attempt to take one step backwards to take two forwards and relaunch his career.
It would be unfair just to single out Adrien this season, as the whole of M-Sport was underwhelming, with only one highlight of the season being the victory of the inevitable Sébastien Loeb in the Monte Carlo Rally. As a result, no M-Sport driver stayed with the team the following year. Sébastien Loeb returned to his usual commitments in Off-road and Rallycross, Gus Greensmith went to Toksport Skoda in WRC2 and Craig Breen returned to Hyundai for a partial season, where he unfortunately died in an accident.
In order to get as much time behind the wheel as possible, Adrien Fourmaux did the full season in WRC2 and in the British Championship, where he became champion, winning every race he entered. In WRC2, the level was much higher as drivers like Andreas Mikkelsen, Oliver Solberg, Gus Greensmith and Teemu Suninen tried to show that they had the quality to return to the top category. They were joined by talents such as Emil Lindholm, the 2022 WRC2 champion, Sami Pajari, Nikolay Gryazin and Yohan Rossel, who were trying to establish themselves as top-level drivers. Adrien Fourmaux had the tough task of competing in one of the most competitive squads in recent years, with a car that was becoming less and less competitive, something that was already quite common in the Frenchman's career.
His season began with fifth place in Monte Carlo, in Mexico he came close to his first podium of the season, but mechanical problems with his Ford Fiesta dropped him to seventh. In Croatia, mechanical problems at the start of the race took him out of the fight for a good result. In Portugal, punctures on consecutive stages once again kept him away from a good result at a time when he was leading the Rally de Portugal in the WRC2 class.
He seemed to be missing that extra something to translate all his potential into concrete results. That extra something almost materialised in Sardinia, where he was leading the race by some margin before a crash brought everything crashing down. This time it was he who made the mistake, something we'd seen quite often in the previous season. But in the next race, in Finland, he redeemed himself and got his first podium of the season! In Greece, he was again unlucky with punctures in consecutive stages when he was leading the race, finishing ‘only’ fourth. In his last WRC2 event, the Central European Rally, he won the WRC2 class, ending the season on a high note. Curiously, he finished ahead of Pierre-Louis Loubet, who raced the season in a Ford Puma Rally1 for the M-Sport team. In fact, the driver who replaced him in the main team was having a miserable season and was pretty much out of the team. As a ‘reward’, Adrien Fourmaux took his place in the Rally of Japan, but he didn't make a good comeback, having an accident in the very first stages.
But how did Adrien's season in WRC2 compare with the previous ones in which he took part? Let's look at the numbers.
As in the previous article, where I looked to see if asphalt specialists still exist, we used the same metric to assess a driver's speed and consistency. For each race, I compiled the seconds per kilometre of qualifying that the drivers lost to the fastest time. By knowing how many seconds each driver lost to the ideal time for each race, we were able to analyse the drivers' performance in more detail and dilute any problems they may have encountered. It's also important to note that the times in the seasons between 2019 and 2021 were compared with drivers who were registered with cars in the Rally2 category, due to the existence of a championship between official team cars and another for private team cars. Fortunately, the FIA brought the championships back together for the 2022 season.
As we can see, 2023 was the season in which Adrien was able to demonstrate the greatest consistency. In the entire season, the only stage he didn't complete was the powerstage in Sardinia. Although the figures say that he was faster in the 2021 season, albeit with a smaller sample of races, I believe that this is due to the Ford Fiesta Rally2's loss of competitiveness compared to the competition. Skoda, Citröen and, recently joined by Toyota, have dominated the last few seasons of the category, while the numbers of Ford Fiesta entries have reduced significantly, a testament to their loss of competitiveness. I think it's also possible to argue that the quality of the squad in the Rally2 class has gone up a level year after year, especially due to the lack of places in the main category marques, leading to many drivers ending up ‘stuck’ in WRC2 with the eternal hope of one day getting there.
Looking at the numbers, it's worth highlighting the 2021 season, with good pace and showing speed in a Ford Fiesta WRC that was completely out of date with the competition. Since the end of 2018, when Sébastien Ogier won the championship with M-Sport, the American brand's disinvestment has led to a drop in the Fiesta's performance. He's still slow, slower than his current team-mate, Grégoire Munster, in 2024, but with this context, you can mitigate this result.
The figures show that the 2022 season was terrible. When he showed speed, he crashed. When he managed to finish, he was slow. It's a vicious circle for a driver in as much difficulty as Adrien was. After so many mistakes in the early races and with his confidence levels dropping, the pressure from the team to finish the races increased, so he took fewer risks and ended up with mediocre results. There was pressure to get better results, and with his confidence levels even lower, he increased his pace and made mistakes. And he ended up trapped in this vicious cycle. He wasn't the only one - Ott Tänak in 2012 and Pierre-Louis Loubet in 2023 are excellent comparisons. Relegation was more than justified.
To conclude, the 2024 season is excellent evidence that you shouldn't skip stages in a driver's development. Adrien Fourmaux's ascent through the various categories of the WRC pyramid is remarkable, but he has skipped stages of development and has been able to show results because of his talent. Talent only takes you so far, to be a top driver you have to learn a lot besides driving. I remember an interview in mid-2022, in which the French driver confessed that he spent a lot of time in apnea while driving because in the midst of the concentration and adrenaline, his body ‘forgot’ to breathe and the lack of oxygenation certainly had a huge impact on his performance.
The relegation to WRC2 for the 2023 season ultimately reflects the popular expression “taking one step backwards to take two steps forwards”. By taking a step back, Adrien Fourmaux was able to rediscover himself and work on his weaknesses, without the media hype and pressure of representing M-Sport in the main championship. And that has carried over into this season. We've seen a more consistently fast driver, with spectacular driving and pushing the Ford Puma to its limits.
We can assume that he has taken a step and a half forward and is now one of the most important drivers in the championship and one we can count on to fight for the podium places. I believe he has all the skills to take the missing half-step and one day potentially fight for the title and be a top driver. But if the rumours are true and he is indeed leaving to become Hyundai's third driver, the title fight may still have to wait...