Opening the road at Rally Sardinia was ‘proper punishment' after mishap, admits Josh McErlean
Incredibly, all three Puma cars came a cropper on the 11.5-mile stretch of road – Martins Sesks walked away from a roll, while Gregoire Munster suffered a similar fate to McErlean.
M-Sport mechanics worked wonders to fix the Kilrea man's machine on Friday and have it ready for the following day, but the trade-off for rejoining under the 'Super Rally' rule meant the Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy member had to run first with co-driver Eoin Treacy.
With more than six minutes of time penalties applied, adding to his points total on the sun-drenched island was always going to be a tall order.
Instead, the 25-year-old used the seat time as an extended test for the Acropolis Rally on June 26-29.
'Running first on the road Saturday and Sunday following the mistake on Friday is proper punishment – I don't think anyone needs to shout at me, I fully understand why you can't make mistakes,' admitted McErlean.
'It was my first time running first on the road and opening a rally – any type of rally – so I have learned a lot from that, even on the Sunday when, second time over the stages, there were more ruts and surface changes. We can take some things forward into Greece.
'It was definitely a nasty rally. It was a shame because, I think on the Friday, we had the pace to have a strong day, but it was my mistake on the second stage, running wide and hitting the tree and taking the rear-left wheel off it.
'This weekend shows you that you need to have a good start to these rallies, especially if you are running further down the field. We knew that Sardinia would be a tough rally but, in actual fact, it turned out to be brutal.'
Rally Sardinia was awash with drama that continued up until the closing Power Stage when an overshoot for leader and eventual winner Sebastien Ogier (Toyota Gazoo Racing) slashed his buffer over runner-up Ott Tanak (Hyundai Motorsport).
The Frenchman held on to make it two victories on the bounce following his success at May's Rally de Portugal.
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