ALTAS ROTAÇÕES - Adrien Fourmaux and Alexandre Coria claim third place

Sunday, 19 July 2026 18:26

Adrien Fourmaux and Alexandre Coria claim third place

Written by Super User

font size decrease font size increase font size
Print
Email

Adrien Fourmaux and Alexandre Coria claim third place

Adrien Fourmaux and Alexandre Coria recorded their second podium finish of the 2026 FIA World Rally Championship, prevailing in a hard-fought intra-team battle with Thierry Neuville and Martijn Wydaeghe for third place.

Neuville and Wydaeghe had a solid event and were fourth, while Esapekka Lappi and Enni Mälkönen finished their third WRC event of the year in eighth.

After completing the longest day of the rally on Saturday, covering almost 150km across nine stages, the final day of action featured the longest stage of the event, the 24.39km Kääriku stage which was run twice. While the previous two days featured warm temperatures and dry, dusty roads, overnight rain presented the crews with a different kind of challenge on Sunday.

Fourmaux entered the final two stages with a slender 1.9s margin over Neuville but produced a committed run on the opening pass to set the joint-third quickest time on the stage and beat his team-mate by 7.9s to increase his advantage to over nine seconds ahead of the final stage. Having bounced back from a difficult Saturday during which he hit an anti-cut device and suffered a slow puncture, Fourmaux then completed a careful run on the Power Stage to make sure of his second podium finish of the season. Despite losing some time to Neuville, Fourmaux and Coria ended the event 5.9s clear of their team-mates and picked up a point in the Super Sunday classification.

Having overcome balance issues with his Hyundai i20 N Rally1 on Saturday, Neuville went into Sunday’s two remaining stages with momentum on his side. On the first pass of Kääriku, the Belgian struggled with an issue which knocked his confidence, meaning he missed out on the chance to grab third. Neuville responded well on the second pass, taking the fight to the Toyotas and ending up second fastest on the Power Stage. Neuville and Wydaeghe’s fourth-place finish means they remain tied on points in the championship with Fourmaux and Coria heading to Finland.

On just his third event of the 2026 season and first Rally Estonia since 2023, Lappi continued his learning curve ahead of his and co-driver Mälkönen’s home rally in Finland in two weeks by reaching the end without any issues. Lappi, gained more valuable setup data in the remaining stages, as he secured a comfortable eighth place finish.

Crew Notes: Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (#16 Hyundai i20 N Rally1)

Fourmaux/Coria claimed first podium since Safari Rally Kenya

French partnership took an additional championship point on Super Sunday

Fourmaux said: "It feels very good to be back on the podium, it was a proper push today in my battle with Thierry, on the first run especially and then we had to ensure the result on the second run. Clearly the first run made the difference today because we had different setups, and it was optimised for the first pass and then a bit worse for the second, but we had a really big push on the first one. In the Power Stage, we knew that we had a decent gap; I should have done a little bit better, but overall, it has been a very positive rally, a good start for us on the fast rallies and I hope we can repeat this kind of performance in Finland."

Crew Notes: Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (#11 Hyundai i20 N Rally1)

Stage win and strong Power Stage performance capped off solid weekend

Setup changes on Saturday morning aided impressive recovery drive

Neuville said: "We started the rally with some issues, and we couldn’t really get the car working, so that meant we had to swap a lot of things for Saturday, which suddenly helped the performance to come back. We were continually improving throughout the day and closed on third by the end of Saturday, but I was just not quite in my rhythm this morning and we lost out to Adrien, who definitely deserved to take third place, hats off to him. It is still a good result for the team, considering where we came from, and second in the Power Stage was the maximum we could achieve from the weekend."

Crew Notes: Esapekka Lappi/Enni Mälkönen (#4 Hyundai i20 N Rally1)

Finnish crew built the speed during a difficult rally

Lappi/Mälkönen delivered clean event as they prepare for home event

Lappi said: "We had a challenging weekend in which we struggled with the pace. Generally, the car felt fine throughout the days, it was just difficult to understand why the speed and the times weren’t there versus the competition. On the other hand, we were able to gain more information and data on the setups and tyres, plus more mileage ahead of Finland, where we hope to be better."

Hyundai Motorsport WRC Sporting Director Andrew Wheatley said: "It has been a good weekend for us in Estonia, with a very strong team performance and 100% reliability all rally across all three cars. We came to this event after a positive test with the expectation that we could fight for the podium, so to achieve this with Adrien and to have Thierry in fourth proves the speed in the car is clearly there to be a threat on the fast gravel rallies. Across all three cars, there were improvements throughout the rally, especially Esapekka who was able to halve the deficit to the leading car on the final stage. Our aim is to take this momentum and performance with us to Finland where we hope to show that speed from the very first stage to try and secure a strong result. I also want to congratulate Sami Pajari and Marko Salminen on taking their first career WRC victory in a dominant fashion."

Next rally

Another fast gravel event is up next, with Rally Finland taking place between July 30 – August 2.