19 hours Ago
Armstrong begins his second full campaign in the sport’s second tier in the south of Spain this weekend at the 42nd edition of Rally Sierra Morena with new navigator, Shane Byrne. Nearly half of the 64 starters comprise Rally2 entries, including No.1 seed Efren Llarena and fellow Citroen C3 exponents Mads Ostberg and Yoann Bonato, Simone Tempestini in a Skoda Fabis RS, and Stephane Lefebvre aboard a Hyundai i20 N.
A strong start to the eight-round Championship is essential for Armstrong, who is back in a M-Sport Ford Fiesta Rally2 with the support of the Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy. However, given the line-up — and the experience of local competitors to contend with in the Cordoba region — the 30-year-old admits he is going to face a real war of attrition, with this spanning seven speed tests on Saturday and a further six stages on the Sunday. “It looks like being quite a good rally,” he told Belfast Telegraph Sport.
“I think the locals have done the stages quite a lot, so any Spanish Championship regulars should be fast. “We are all set for Spain. It will be a big pace but hopefully I am a step forward from where I was last year.
I know now what’s required, so it is just trying to pin that on the rally and try to get all the ducks in a row and make sure there are no ducks running off to the side.” Armstrong arrives in Spain on the back of a strong display at the West Cork Rally over St Patrick’s weekend; he won the three-leg dash on times only to be disqualified post-rally after an investigation by Motorsport Ireland stewards deemed he had received “outside assistance” between the end of the last stage and parc fermé after his car’s engine failed. “The car felt good in West Cork — we set a good pace down there — so it is really a case now of continuing to push, trying to build on the positives, and just visualising how hard you need to go to get a strong result when we are over in Spain,” added Armstrong, who finished the 2024 FIA European Rally Championship sixth in the points standings.
.
