The French satisfied with their shakedown in Finland

De l’aveu même des pilotes finlandais, la portion de route choisie (longue de 4,48 km) pour accueillir l’ultime séance d’essai était particulièrement sélective. Cela a permis aux équipages d’être immédiatement confrontés avec le défi qui les attend à partir de vendredi, la superspéciale de ce soir (début à 18h08) étant surtout faite pour les spectateurs. A l’issue de la matinée, les deux tricolores évoluant chez M-Sport avaient le sourire. « Compared to Estonia, I modified quite a few things on the car and I wanted to see if it was going in the right direction, explained the Corsican. It was important to check the set up. I could have done just 5 passes, but I made a small mistake in a crossing so I made one more. The feeling was encouraging this morning, we must hope that it will be the same thing tomorrow. »9^e best time, Pierre-Louis was ahead Adrien fourmaux of 0s3. Finishing this session 2s7 behind the fastest Kalle Rovanperä, the Frenchman also gave a positive assessment.

Pierre-Louis Loubet and Vincent Landais at the shakedown (Nikos Katikis / DPPI)

« I had not had the opportunity to check if the changes in settings made compared to Estonia were going in the right direction, said the northerner. Therefore, sign a 4^e time during our first run on terrain that is not really mine, it's very promising. Then, with knowledge of the course, some started to lose their pins and it was a little more complicated to compete. I'm very happy though, because we've tried things that work on the Puma and we're in an interesting car. These cars are very sensitive to changes in settings so as soon as you lightly touch the bars or suspensions, you can feel it a lot. We had a lot of fun. It's so nice to move around with a car that works better than the Fiesta, that we tried to take advantage of it. However, you should not get too carried away, because it is easy to make a mistake. » After this evening's short time, Loubet and Fourmaux will be hard at work tomorrow with 9 special stages to be contested on Friday.