Jon Armstrong made it three European Rally Championship class wins from his last three starts with a comprehensive start to finish victory on Rally Poland.

The Kesh driver had already piloted his Ford Fiesta Rally3 to ERC3 class wins in Portugal and the Canary Islands this season, and despite an increase in the level of competition in Poland, only a puncture denied him a clean sweep of fastest stage times on the 16 stage rally as he finished inside the top 20 overall.

Ahead of the latest round the championship the focus was on how Armstrong’s Fiesta would match up to the new ERC3 Renault Clio, but the Ford never looked threatened as the Fermanagh man quickly pulled clear of his class rivals

“It was the first time we were up against the Renault Clio and the times looked good, so M-Sport Poland are happy,” revealed Jon.

“We will have to see how other rallies go when the cars are up against each other, but for sure in Poland it seemed like we were able to beat them. Overall, it is really positive.”

Despite the ease with which he was winning his class, Armstrong did not slacken his pace as he challenged the more powerful Rally2 cars.

“We are always looking at our pace relative to the Rally2 cars as well, so it’s always important to drive pretty much every stage flat out,” he said.

“We had some good times at the weekend against really good drivers in Rally2 cars like Pontus Tidemand, last year’s champion Llarena and Osian Pryce. We were quite close, and beating them on some stages, so that was a nice feeling.”

It was clear Armstrong was going to dominate the class from the outset. Fastest on the short Friday evening Super Special stage, he had opened up a lead of over one minute by the fourth stage, and even a puncture that cost him almost two minutes could not halt his progress.

“It was a good event,” he acknowledged. “We got off to a good start on the super special and then on the Saturday morning we were a good bit faster than the other Rally3 cars.

"On Saturday afternoon it was more or less the same again, but the stages were very rough so we were trying not to damage the car. We got a puncture on the last proper stage on Saturday. There was still about 10k of the stage remaining, but we knew we would have lost quite a bit of time and done more damage by continuing, so we decided to change it.

"On Sunday we were just trying to get into a good rhythm again and set some good times. They were nice stages, very fast. The car was really nice to drive, and I was happy with how it all went. Overall, it was a good weekend.”

Next up for Armstrong is the Latvian round of the European Championship in June, where he will attempt to make it four in a row.