Adrien Fourmaux has explained the issue that took him out of the World Rally Championship victory battle for the second event in a row, remaining confident about his fortunes.

Fourmaux had been locked in an intense fight for the rally lead with Toyota’s Sebastien Ogier at Rally Italy Sardinia that had seen the Hyundai driver lead the rally on Friday morning before ending the day a mere 2.1s adrift.

Fourmaux continued to take the fight to Ogier on Saturday morning before hopes of securing maiden WRC win vanished following a front left puncture on stage eight [Lerno – Su Filigosu 1 – 24.34 km]. Fourmaux pushed on before eventually making the decision to stop and change the wheel. After stopping again to let Ogier, who was caught up in his dust, pass, Fourmaux dropped almost four minutes.

Fourmaux has endured his fair share of misfortune this year. A mechanical failure took him out of second position in Rally Portugal last month, while a technical fault after the first stage robbed him a strong points haul in Safari Rally Kenya.    

“No [it seems like we cannot get any good luck], but it will turn. Before it was Thursday [referring to his issue in Kenya] then it was the second day [Rally Portugal] the next time will be the third [day], and after that it will be fine,” said Fourmaux. 

When asked about the puncture, he added: “I was just a braking line, I felt a rock but I didn’t see it. 

“I got a puncture straight away and then after that we tried to manage the tyre but it started to be quite hard on the car and I didn’t want what happened in Kenya and Portugal so I stopped and we lost time. Then after that we were too close to Seb and we were told to stop to let him pass so we had three lots of time loss. It was a big disappointment.”

Fourmaux’s day worsened on stage nine when he ran off the road after getting directed by dust coming into his i20 N on stage that also included a second wild run off the road. Fourmaux was kicked out of the line over a jump but instead of rejoining the road he chose to drive across a field clipping a remote TV camera before rejoining the stage at the next corner. 

“For us the bad thing was already done [in the previous stage],” said Fourmaux when asked if frustration from the puncture resulted in a pair of mistakes in stage 9 that dropped him to ninth overall [+4m46.6s] behind leader Ogier.

“I was surprised by one jump and it pushed me out of the line and after that I avoided going back on the road because I knew there were some rocks between the small road and the field.

“And then there was a lot of dust coming in the car, and I was asking [co-driver] Alex [Coria] if his door was closed, and I forgot the next corner.”