Jon Armstrong suffered his first non-finish of the season after a fraught Royal Rally of Scandinavia ended in early retirement because of an overheating engine in his Ford Fiesta Rally2.
Armstrong had racked up two top-eight finishes in the opening two rounds of the European Rally Championship and was looking to improve on those showings on an event he has tackled before, but his hopes of fighting at the top of the field were compromised by a poor time in the qualifying stage that left him running near the front of the field on the gravel event.
That seeding meant he had to contend with the loose gravel on the roads, with the cars behind benefitting from the cleaner lines, and he spent much of the rally outside the top 10 before his early demise.
“It wasn’t a great rally overall for us. Our pace wasn’t quite with the front runners,” he conceded.
“Qualifying didn’t really go to plan and we didn’t have a great rhythm on what was a very high speed stage. For whatever reason we weren’t quite close enough to the other guys, and the times are always really close so you could drop one second and lose six to 10 positions.”
“We were running fourth on the road and there was still a big cleaning effect, and it was hard to get into the top 10.
"We were running in and around thirteenth but our times were close to the others in and around us so that showed it was the cleaning having a big effect. Because we finished the first day thirteenth we were then third on the road on Saturday, so we didn’t really get a good run at it from a running order position to know what our pace was. It was hard on those fast roads to keep up.”
Three stages into the second day Armstrong had climbed one position and was threatening the top 10 when he struck trouble.
“We were getting close to the inside of corners, and on that stage there appeared to be a stick or something that went into the radiator and put a hole in it,” he explained.
“We were near the finish, but when we got to the end we could see a bit of steam coming out. After the stop control, we filled the hole with some Quick Metal we have in the car and that stopped the leak.”
He still had one stage to complete before service and was forced to stop at lakes and rivers to top up their water supplies. That was enough to get him through the next test and into service where the damaged radiator could be replaced, but it was not the end of his problems as he suffered only his second retirement in his last 13 rallies.
“On the next stage, we had high temperatures again so we must have done some damage, and we had to pull out before we did any more damage. It was frustrating because a few guys dropped out and we could have ended up ninth or tenth which wouldn’t have been a terrible result.
"It was just one of those events where a simple thing put us out of the rally. I guess I am still trying to get to grips with everything on the Rally2 front but we were still happy with our performance. It was getting better and better.”
Armstrong has the chance to bounce back quickly, with the next round of the series in Estonia from July 5-7.
“We will bounce back on Estonia in a couple of weeks,” he predicted.
“We will take what we learnt from Sweden and try to improve our pace and see where we can end up. Hopefully, with a bit more seat time and a few more rallies under our belt we will be closer to the front pace.”
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