Jon’s ‘over the moon’ with maiden podium

JON Armstrong concluded his first full European Rally Championship season in style when he earned his maiden podium finish in the series at the final event of the year, Rally Silesia in Poland.

He produced a dominant performance on the Sunday, winning five of the six stages in his M-Sport Rally2 Ford Fiesta on the event’s final day to climb five places on the leaderboard, cementing his belief that he belongs at the top level of the sport.

“It’s just a really special way to finish the season,” Jon beamed. “I think going into next year – I don’t know what the plan is yet – this was the strong result we needed before the off season.

“Deep down I know I’m capable of putting in times but it’s not always that straightforward. Everything has to gel and the level is very high in the ERC. If everything is not 100 per cent and you’re not totally on it you’re not going to be at the races.

“But once you get the confidence, understand the tyres and the car and how to carry the speed then it becomes a lot easier.

“We’re very happy with how the season went and with this rally we’re over the moon.”

The Kesh native produced a dazzling performance throughout, recovering from a difficult start that left him 14th after the first three stages and over 30 seconds adrift of the podium places.

But on the very next stage, the fightback began, with Armstrong going fastest to start clawing back some of the time lost due to a technical issue and a spin over the opening three tests and by the end of Saturday he had moved up to seventh overall after recording another quickest time.

“We had some sort of ECU gremlin that we were able to reset but we basically had no power [on stage two] so we lost a lot of time there and then the second proper stage [stage three] we had a spin and all in all we probably lost 30-40 seconds,” Jon explained.

“And we weren’t very quick on the super special stages either, losing about six or seven seconds but we were able to pull it back on the proper stages, so to speak.”

Ahead of the final day, Armstrong was almost 48 seconds behind leader, Haydon Paddon. But by Sunday’s end, he had gone from seventh to second overall, finishing 1.5 seconds ahead of the New Zealander and just 18.3 seconds behind winner, Andrea Mabellini, winning five of the six stages including the concluding power stage to cement fifth placed in the final European Rally Championship standings.

“We knew from the day before that we had good pace and we knew if we could carry that rhythm through we could make good time, so we hoped to catch the boys sleeping in the morning, which I think we did with a good tyre choice,” Jon acknowledged.

“It’s nice that we had the space to be the fastest on Sunday – we won all the stages apart from one, which is really cool.”

It was quite the conclusion to an excellent first season with M-Sport for the 29-year-old who was backed by Motorsport Ireland as he and co-driver Eoin Treacy finished 2024 in the ideal way.

Jon wishes to thank his sponsors for their continued support throughout the 2024 season: M-Sport, MS-RT, Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy, Seacon UK, Thrustmaster, KW Renewables, Longhill Plant Hire, Fisher Motorsport, LVI Engineering, Keane Design and C&M Motorsport Sales.

Meanwhile, Cookstown’s Philip Allen also brought his ERC season to a successful conclusion, finishing a superb 10th overall in his Rally2 Ford Fiesta.