The Ford squad is all set for next week’s Rally Monte Carlo 2026 season opener
M-Sport Ford has taken the covers off the final iteration of the current Ford Puma Rally1 car that will tackle the 2026 World Rally Championship.
The British squad has once again opted for a livery change for the new season with the purple look, featuring Red Bull branding from 2025, replaced with a striking white, green and blue colour scheme.
The change of livery has been partly triggered by the team’s expanded collaboration with Motorsport Ireland and its rally academy, which has resulted in an all-Irish driver line-up for 2026 in the form of Joshua McErlean and Jon Armstrong.
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McErlean is set for a second campaign with M-Sport after the 26-year-old impressed during his rookie season last year after stepping up from WRC2. McErlean will be joined by 31-year-old Northern Irishman Armstrong, who has graduated to M-Sport’s Rally1 squad after finishing runner-up in the European Rally Championship in 2025 after scoring wins in Wales and Croatia.
M-Sport is understood to have focussed its off-season development programme for the Puma largely around geometry and weight balance.
“We have a small plan, but it is likely we won’t use all of the homologation jokers, but there are a couple of things we are looking to do around geometry to let us do a couple of things with the weight, and so forth, to get that balance back," said Tim Jackson, M-Sport’s lead engineer for the Puma Rally1, at the end of last season.
2026 M-Sport WRC Ford Puma
“There are a couple of items that are not outright performance items so one of things we have worked on last year and in 2025 is brake cooling. None of that is homologated in these current cars so you don’t see that development from the paperwork side of things.
“Brake cooling isn’t a performance item but getting it right allows you to optimise your brake packages and means you can continue that performance right through the stages, whereas the driver may say that the brake pedal was going off towards the end of the stage, and that might have affected their ability to drive at 100%.
“If you can do things on the car that lets the driver drive at 100%, you have gained performance. When you get towards the end of a car’s life the investment has less returns on it."
2026 M-Sport WRC Ford Puma
The squad completed its pre-season testing in the south of France last week ahead of next week’s Monte Carlo curtain-raiser.
“Our test has gone really well. Obviously our driver line-up is quite a young one. Jon is new to the team so there is a lot of focus on getting him settled into the team and trying to build up mileage and experience to have confidence to take forward into the rally,” said Jackson at the Monte Carlo test.
“We are realistic with our expectations but Monte Carlo is a rally where if you can be solidly good throughout the course of the weekend you can be up there at the end of the rally. Let the other people push hard and make mistakes, and us develop as the rally goes on.”
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Category: General Sports
