After a frustrating time in Le Limousin, Axel Garcia and Fabien Pomares went into the rally with the aim of rebuilding their confidence and matching the pace of the leading drivers in the R2 class. And though their Rallye du Rouergue came to a premature end, they left the event with hopes high of strong second half of the season.

Their week began with a Renault Sport Technologies test session at the wheel of the Renault Twingo R.S. R2. Though weather conditions were hardly ideal, the duo enjoyed a satisfactory half day of testing on similar terrain to the rally itself. With the Twingo R.S. R2 Evo proving effective in testing, Garcia’s went into the latest round of the French Rally Championship full of confidence.

When hostilities began, the pair gradually picked up the pace, taking fourth place in the R group in the rally’s longest special stage, the 35.45km Nayrac sector. Running second in the R2 class, behind a far more experienced rival, they repeated their performance when the stage was run for a second time, and ended a superb first day in second place in R2 and fourth in the R group, ahead of all the R3 crews.

Garcia’s rally ended in untimely fashion the following morning, however, when he ran off the road, losing grip on exiting a corner made muddy by the cars before him.

“It’s the first time Axel has had to retire after going off the road since he started out in rally,” said Renault Sport Technologies Team Manager Sylvain Alanore, commenting on what had been a perfect outing for the reigning French Junior Rally champion to that point. “It’s only his second season in the discipline. This incident is only going to make him a better driver because he’s going to learn how to deal with it. Nobody’s blaming him, but it’s a shame because we felt we could have really done something at this rally.”

Prior to their off-road excursion, which came as a result of their lack of experience in tricky grip conditions, the pair had shown exactly what they are capable of.

“Axel and Fabien turned in the kind of performance we’ve been expecting of them,” continued Sylvain Alanore. “They’ve proved that the Twingo R2 can keep pace with the best in R2. They came second in the last few specials, losing less than two tenths of a second per kilometre to the leading crew. Saturday’s excursion stopped us from making further progress but it’s not a massive blow, because we’d managed to get the car and the crew working perfectly together. After all, the reason why Axel went off was because he had complete confidence in the car and was really going for it. The start we made to this rally is going to give us something to work with for the rest of the season.”

Buoyed by the form they showed on day one, Axel Garcia and Fabien Pomares can now look forward with confidence to the Rallye Mont Blanc Morzine, the next rally on their schedule, which takes place at the start of September.