Jon Armstrong knows he needs a result at this week's Rally Chile after a difficult run of World Rally Championship events. The M-Sport driver has impressed with his speed in his rookie Rally1 season, occasionally running in the top-three overall and winning his first WRC stage at Acropolis Rally Greece.
However, his best finish of the season is only eighth place (claimed in Sweden and Japan), with Fridays proving a particular struggle for the 31-year-old. Jon Armstrong last had a clean opening leg back in May at Rally Japan. Mistakes in Estonia and Finland, followed by a punctured tire that destroyed a brake line in Paraguay, have blighted his results. He then failed to finish Rally del Paraguay altogether after hitting a bank and destroying his suspension on Sunday.
Speed Not Enough, Consistency Needed
“To be honest, it's a difficult time because we want to get a good result,” Armstrong told DirtFish. “We've shown some good speed, but it was another DNF [in Paraguay] and there's been a lot of that this year. So, OK, I think it's good that we can show some flashes of speed, but now trying to piece it all together seems to be a little bit tricky.”
“It's one of those things that if we could get a weekend where we're fifth overall, it's a monkey off the back essentially. But it's eluded us at this point,” he added.
As a result, Armstrong finds himself 13th in the championship – behind Rally2 drivers Yohan and Leo Rossel, Hyundai's part-timer Esapekka Lappi, and his M-Sport team-mate Josh McErlean, who has managed a pair of sixth-place finishes in 2026. McErlean has 29 points versus Armstrong's 16.
Mental Approach for Chile
“It's difficult because we're up against the fastest guys in the world,” Armstrong added. “And just to be a second per kilometer off them still takes a lot of balls through a stage. You don't want to be backing off too much because you're not using the car, you're not feeling like you're in the rhythm and actually that's maybe whenever some of the things, the mistakes are happening to us.”
“So I think it's really important just to kind of work on the mental side, try to stay focused and just really take a measured approach. I think the road cleaning in Chile will help us, it seems a bit more [of an effect] than Paraguay. We need to just try and get through as safe as possible,” he concluded.
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Josh McErlean aims to improve on his sixth-place finish in Paraguay as he heads to Rally Chile. M-Sport braces for the reversed-stage challenge.
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