M-Sport's team principal has urged his drivers to concentrate on driving improvements, rather than car performance
Photography by M-Sport
Words by David Evans, DirtFish Head of Media
M-Sport team principal Richard Millener has urged his drivers to concentrate on their performance rather than potential updates to the Ford Puma Rally1.
While accepting his team doesn’t have the budget for significant evolutions to the car, Millener said Rally Portugal earlier this month offered further evidence that the M-Sport-built Puma remains at the sharp end of the field in its current form.
“We’re still developing small things here and there,” Millener told DirtFish, “but I still don’t believe the car is far away in terms of performance. I went to [the] Lousada [stage] and watched them do a drag race against Toyota and we were exactly the same. For Grégoire [Munster] to lose in Lousada to Kalle [Rovanperä] by 0.2s and set the same time as Adrien [Fourmaux] in the Hyundai proves my point.
“We’ve seen good stage times from Grég and Josh [McErlean] in Monte Carlo, Sweden, I’d say every rally except for the Canaries. We’ve known from the start that the chassis is good enough – I think the guys have a good enough package to perform well.
“I’m telling them we have to work harder in the driving, we have to find a way to make these tires work for their styles. That’s where we’re going to be able to find the big gains. We just need to keep being realistic. This is the package the guys have got, we know it’s good enough, so go and make the most of it.”
Millener feels both Munster and McErlean need to sharpen their skills on superspecials
If there was a development budget available, where would Millener be directing it?
“There’s nothing that would revolutionize this car,” he added. “I’m sure we’d be looking at further dampers, further specifications for the diffs and setup options. Honestly, do I think it would make a big enough difference than working hard on the driving? No, probably not.”
M-Sport completed its four-day Sardinia test last week, with Millener happy with the results. He added, however, that he wanted to sharpen his crews’ approach to superspecial stages.
“We’re fighting so hard for tenths of seconds on the gravel,” said Millener, “but Grég and Josh were seven seconds down after the first superspecial in Portugal – and that was less than three kilometers.
“Maybe we send them to an autotest or something like that, some sort of competitive event on Tarmac where they’ve got to be aggressive with the car to get it sliding. It’s something we need to work on.”
Words:David Evans
Tags: Gregoire Munster, Josh McErlean, M-Sport, Mārtinš Sesks, Richard Millener, WRC, WRC 2025
Publish Date May 31, 2025 DirtFish
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