Three rounds into the 2024 World Rally Championship season, a compelling case could be made for Adrien Fourmaux to be classed as the driver of the season so far. The Frenchman has turned heads on his full-time Rally1 return, exceeding both his and the M-Sport Ford team’s expectations to sit third in the championship standings.
Fifth in the Monte Carlo opener, he then took a first outright podium in the WRC in Sweden before repeating his third place in Kenya. That made Fourmaux the first driver since Dani Sordo in 2006 to follow up a maiden podium with a top-three in their next event.
Fourmaux’s impressive start to 2024 has left him sitting 23 points adrift of championship leader Thierry Neuville. The former doctor in training-turned rally driver is 13 points ahead of Neuville’s Hyundai team-mate Ott Tanak, the man he replaced at M-Sport this year. But the key statistic that outlines Fourmaux’s stark turnaround in form is this: he has already eclipsed his entire 2022 tally by 31 points after three rounds.
This improvement can seemingly be attributed to a strategy of stepping backwards to go forward, employed by M-Sport, renowned cultivators of young rally talent. It’s an approach that three-time WRC runner-up Elfyn Evans and 2019 world champion Tanak know all too well.
“In all honestly, I didn’t expect us to be third in the drivers’ championship,” M-Sport boss Malcolm Wilson tells Motorsport.com. “I probably didn’t expect to get back-to-back podiums, but Adrien has got them by being smart.
“The thing about rally is it is a long process [to be successful]. Sadly, there is no quick route unless you are absolutely exceptional like a Sebastien Loeb or whatever. You have to look at how long it took with Ott and Elfyn and how long it has taken with Adrien. There is no short cut, unfortunately.”
Fourmaux has shown superb form since returning to a Rally1 seat after a year out of the spotlight
Photo by: McKlein / McMaster
Fourmaux burst onto the top-flight rally scene with M-Sport in 2021, finishing fifth in Croatia on his first outing in a full WRC car. He went on to score a maiden stage win in Kenya that season, finishing five of eight rallies inside the top seven. Such form created plenty of excitement and growing expectation that M-Sport had found the driver who could be France’s next rallying hero after Sebastien Loeb and Sebastien Ogier, as Motorsport.com discussed at the time here.
But the following season, the first…
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