Jon Armstrong secured his first-ever podium finish in the European Rally Championship with second overall on Poland’s Rally Silesia.

After a troubled start to the rally, the Kesh driver mounted a stunning fightback, posting seven fastest stage times to climb from fourteenth overall to second, and claim fifth overall in the final ERC Championship standings. 

Armstrong’s previous highest finish this season had been a sixth place on the previous round of the series in Wales, but Poland surpassed even his own expectations after a drive he hailed as his best ever. 

“I think it is probably my best result ever,” he reflected.  

“Obviously winning a couple of the Junior WRC rounds is up there, but to be able to have the fastest pace on an ERC rally is really cool.

"That is what we have been working towards, and to finally get into the rhythm to do that is really nice.  It is years of trying not just from the driving side, but trying from the budget side, and all the effort that has gone in from everyone helping me.

"It is not easy whenever you are not quite getting the results you want, and there is a lot of pressure to it, but I think this week it all settled in.

"I was able to carry the confidence from the previous round in Rali Ceredigion, and now that I know that I can do it I was probably more relaxed into it.” 

Armstrong finished the rally 18 seconds behind the winner, but his chances of a podium finish seemed remote after he dropped 44 seconds over the first three stages.  

“On the first proper stage, we had some sort of fault with the ECU and I couldn’t figure out what it was. There was no power,” he explained.  

“We had no anti-lag but it was still spitting out that I did have it, so we didn’t know what the issue was.

"I could have stopped on the stage and reset it, but I would have lost more time. After the stage I was able to turn it on and off again and that fixed it. 

"The stage after that I had a spin because I was pushing a bit to try to make up for it. On the first stage, we dropped about 20 seconds, and on the second stage we dropped about 20 again, so about forty seconds in all, and then I dropped time on the super special because I’m not good at them, so we maybe could have won it but that is the way rallying goes.” 

Armstrong posted two fastest stage times on the Saturday as he started his fightback, and that gave him the confidence to push hard on the final day as he targeted his first-ever podium finish.  

“We took a step up the day before (Saturday), and we had to use that rhythm to push and carry the speed,” he said.  

“It was just trying to keep the confidence up. I knew if I could push hard where maybe others would be questioning things in the morning, then we could take time on new stages.

"We took quite a big chunk on the first two on Sunday. I had the wrong tyres choice when the rain came in for the final stage of that loop so we lost a bit of time again, but for the final loop I bolted four wets on the car and we seemed to have good pace again then. We were able to do what we wanted to do.” 

Armstrong’s main podium challenger was local driver Marczyk Mikołaj who was less than four seconds behind going into the final stage.

With ERC Champion elect Hayden Paddon 20 seconds ahead it seemed the challenge on the final test would be to hold on to third, so he was surprised when he received the news that he had overhauled Paddon in the final kilometres.  

“Initially it looked like third but Paddon had been really cautious so we managed to take 20 seconds out of him on the final stage and got second, which was a big surprise,” he admitted.  

“Just to get the podium was the main focus and I knew I had to push hard to try to do that. It was a big surprise.” 

His second-place finish has come at an opportune time for Armstrong, as he looks to secure a budget for next season.

“We needed a good rally because if we didn’t it would be very hard,” he conceded.  

“We are now trying to get something when it is fresh in everyone’s mind.  Ultimately I would like to do WRC2 but that is very expensive and it is not always easy to achieve that.

"That might be something that could come around, but it depends on how good a job we have done of promoting ourselves. ERC would be nice as well, but I would still be happy to be doing events that would suit me and just pick and choose.  

"I know it's hard to put stuff together so I’m quite happy to be doing something next year rather than nothing.”