Gus Greensmith started the season on the right foot. The fifth places harvested in the always complex Montecarlo Rally and on the snow of the Swedish Rally invited the British driver to optimism. In fact, Greensmith looked ever closer to his first podium finish in the WRC premier class, his great goal for this campaign. Nevertheless, passing through Croatia and Portugal was a reality check for the M-Sport driver. Without rhythm to be with the best, his own mistakes and reliability problems took him away from the top positions.
Greensmith recovered the pulse in the Rally of Italy-Sardinia with a valuable seventh place with the Ford Puma Rally1, although his pace was also not fast enough to fight for a better result. For that reason, the British driver faces the Safari Rally with reduced prospectsseeing that the goal of achieving his first podium seems further away than at other times of the season. Caution in contrast to Gus Greensmith’s fourth place finish in the 2021 Safari Rally.
Despite achieving his best WRC result in Kenya, Gus Greensmith He has preferred to avoid the temptation to talk about the long-awaited podium that he so desires: «I wasn’t as fast as I thought I could be at Rally Italia-Sardinia earlier this month, but I think we have at least used the rally to learn more about the Ford Puma Rally1 and how to drive it on gravel. Talking about the podium may not be the most appropriate now. I know we have speed, but we have to find it and put all the factors together.
«In the end we are talking about the Safari Rally and anything can happen, but I don’t want to think about setting a goal. You can lose a lot of time on a stage with everyone, but you can also get a prize if you manage to drive with pace and sensibly. It is a rally where it is very difficult to judge the pace, so the only thing you can do is balance speed with taking utmost care of mechanics. This is the only way to get something positive out of Kenya,” added the M-Sport driver.
As there is no possibility of testing in Kenya due to regulations, Gus Greensmith has resorted to other methods to prepare for the rally: «Jonas Andersson, my co-driver, came to my house after the Rally Italia-Sardinia and we worked on the notes with everything kind of ‘on boards’. We have done everything we can in terms of preparation. Kenya was a very strong event for the team last year and we made some good steps forward in Italy so I think we know the direction to go. We all want a strong result, but we have to go step by step».
Photos: Red Bull Content Pool / FIA WRC