Armstrong is ‘over the moon’ with maiden victory

JON Armstrong claimed his first ever overall European Rally Championship victory when he surged to victory at JDS Machinery Rali Ceredigion in Wales by almost 30 seconds from his M-Sport team-mate, Estonia’s Romet Jurgenson.

The Kesh native, who had fellow Irishman, Shane Byrne on the notes, was in super form throughout the weekend in his Rally2 Ford Fiesta, recording some sensational stage times, while remaining level headed and composed until the final stage when he admits the enormity of the achievement started to hit home.

“It wasn’t a bad weekend all things considered!,” the 30-year-old beamed. “I’m over the moon to get an overall win in the ERC. It’s something you’re always working towards and we knew we were getting closer and, of course, Wales is as close as we get to a home rally, so it was definitely the one we wanted to put the biggest effort in and really go for.

“It was such a nice feeling [to cross the finish line first] but I think I was quite emotional before even starting the [final] stage and when we crossed the line, I was just over the moon but so emotional. Both me and Shane had tears in our eyes getting down to the top control.

“I think the emotion had to come out and I was speechless for a long time until we got out of the car and onto the roof [to celebrate] which was such a good feeling as well.

“Some amazing memories now and to have pictures of that moment to look back in in years to come, but at the moment it feels very raw and there’s so much emotion going through you.”

Armstrong didn’t have it all his own way over the three days of the event as he almost saw his challenge end before it really started before he surged home in the end with a sensational run over the penultimate stage Nant y Moch to also add a first British Rally Championship win to his list of achievements.

“It wasn’t an easy weekend with the spin and hitting the front of the cattle grid on stage three, which was a bit close to damaging the radiator,” he observed.

“Thankfully we got away with that and from there it was just about pushing while trying to manage things at the same time.

“It was close with Romet [Jurgenson] but we were trying to push on some stages to make a gap and on others we tried not to take too many risks.

“In the end we managed to do it and in the wet weather we were really good as well and we were 14 seconds quicker than anyone on the penultimate stage.”

Going into the final day, Armstrong held a 7.3 seconds lead over Jurgenson, which he admits was far from ‘comfortable’.

“It’s not comfortable when it’s under 10 seconds, you still have to be pushing to even maintain that,” he explained. “You’re always trying to get a bit more, which is why you are always pushing on the final day to see if you can build a gap or at least keep the gap you have.

“The first three stages we had to push and then the last one, when we had gained 33 seconds, we knew then we don’t need to do anything silly, so I drove it really carefully to secure the win.”

Armstrong’s win leaves him third in the overall championship standings, and while he admits winning the series outright is a ‘long-shot’, he knows ‘anything is possible’ in Croatia next month.

“It’s still a bit of a long-shot but Croatia is a very tricky rally, so anything is possible,” he acknowledged. “It’s very slippy, the tarmac is really slippy and when you add in the mud [that gets dragged on from the multiple cuts] it’s really difficult.

“We obviously need to keep an eye on what [Andrea] Mabellini and [Miko] Marczyk are doing on the event. Realistically, we need them to have issues, which isn’t something you wish on people but we’ve had our share of issues this year, so we just need to go there and do the best job we can do, one corner at a time, and see if we can take it to the guys.

“It would be nice to be first in the championship and while it feels a long way off at the minute, anything is possible!”