M-Sport World Rally Team’s Ott Tänak showed his potential at the weekend in the Rally Australia. 

The Estonian finished in sixth place – an impressive feat on what was his first taste of the Australian stages with M-Sport’s top-specification Ford Fiesta RS WRC.

In the sister M-Sport Fiesta RS WRC however, M-Sport driver Elfyn Evans simply could not get to grips with the nature of the Australian roads. The Welshman struggled for confidence all weekend and the pace he was able to extract from the unfamiliar terrain was far from what his talent deserved.

Gradually improving their pace as the event went on, he and co-driver Daniel Barritt were able to make some inroads, but with little to fight for, this is an event they’ll be keen to forget as they finished ninth.

As the FIA World Rally Championship returns to asphalt next month, the Brits will be keen to turn their season around with a positive result on the notorious Tour de Course Rallye de France

Tänak said: “It’s been a really tough rally. This was my first experience of these stages with a world rally car so there was a lot to discover. We made a lot of changes to the notes and it was good to see that the speed was still good enough to set some competitive stage times.

“With the experience we have, it was very hard to follow the top crews but we have learnt a lot and I am sure that we will be able to compete at the highest level in the future.”

Evans added: “It’s been a really tough rally for us. We managed to make some small inroads throughout the weekend, but we still weren’t where we wanted to be. 

"It’s important that we go back to the office and work out what was wrong so that we can ensure that we don’t have another rally like this for a very long time."

Elsewhere, in the WRC 2 category, M-Sport cars completely dominated the time sheets which resulted in a podium lock-out for the Ford Fiesta RRC.

Following an intense battle for victory, Nasser Al-Attiyah claimed the spoils 13.5 seconds ahead of Yurii Protasov who suffered a 10-second penalty for a jump start on SS15. Abdulaziz Al-Kuwari rounded off the top-three in third place.

Runaway championship leader Sébastien Ogier, of Volkswagen, won the rally.