Paraguay delivered more Sunday drama as Jon Armstrong looks set to miss out on a finish at Rally del Paraguay after clattering a bank and wrecking the left-rear corner of his Ford Puma Rally1. Team-mate Josh McErlean also endured a troubled morning, nursing technical gremlins through the closing stages.
The impact happened on SS20, Artigas Oeste, when Armstrong lost grip and slid wide, tagging a bank that bent the rear-left suspension sideways. He managed to reach the finish line, but the wheel was dragging at a 45-degree angle, and his seventh place overall is now in serious jeopardy as he attempts roadside repairs.
"There was a lot less grip than I was expecting," Armstrong said. "We ran wide and touched a bank with the rear."
McErlean, running sixth, has been dealing with multiple issues aboard his Puma. The gear shift mechanism snapped one kilometer into Sunday's second stage, forcing him to reach down to the floor and push the selector rod horizontally instead of using the normal vertical shifter. A temporary fix with a 10mm spanner reconnected the broken shifter for SS20, but warning lights also appeared on his dashboard, including "FP low," hinting at a possible fuel pressure problem.
Fortunately for McErlean, the gap to WRC2 leader Diego Dominguez in eighth is a healthy three minutes, so his position should be safe if he can cruise through the final two stages.
Meanwhile, Adrien Fourmaux continued his relentless charge, snatching third place from Elfyn Evans on the opening stage and extending the margin to 3.8s after SS20. Evans admitted he couldn't match his earlier pace: "I don't seem to be able to find the same rhythm as we did earlier in the weekend," he said. "You have to drive well also, which we're not maximising at the minute."
Rally leader Sami Pajari now holds a 26.1s advantage over Hayden Paddon, who admitted he wasn't pushing to the limit. "I'm just trying to manage the gap to Adrien and Elfyn behind," Paddon said. "We're not trying to match them, just manage it and keep the pressure on Sami."
Oliver Solberg, fifth overall, has a comfortable margin of over a minute over McErlean and sits second in the Sunday classification, just 2.2s behind his Toyota team-mate Sebastien Ogier.
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