Improved consistency important for M-Sport driver, but he still wants to be pushing himself towards higher finishes too
Jon Armstrong is targeting the top five, and potentially a podium finish, through the second half of the 2026 World Rally Championship.
Armstrong was called up to M-Sport’s Rally1 line-up alongside fellow Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy driver Josh McErlean at the top of the year after three seasons in the European Rally Championship.
The 31-year-old has acquitted himself well to life in the WRC, impressing with his pace – especially in the first four events – but has yet to finish higher than eighth overall, a result he achieved in both Sweden and Japan.
Following a rally-ending crash in Portugal and two lucky escapes on Rally Islas Canarias, the recent Rally Japan was an important event for Armstrong and co-driver Shane Byrne to finish, and Armstrong is aware of how imperative consistency is.
However he is also a “firm believer” in pushing limits to understand where the bar is.
“The start of the season was good,” Armstrong told DirtFish, “and I was trying to maybe push the envelope and show what I can do. But, yeah, when you’re going to rallies that are quite new, then you don’t really know how to, let’s say, maybe make the pacenotes, make the recce, how to get the most out of that.
“And I think in ERC, I was experienced with the events. And here [in the WRC], I don’t have that. So, yeah, it’s a bit of pressure.”
I'm a firm believer in trying to push yourself to understand where the limits are. Jon Armstrong
Asked if he was trying to run before he could walk, Armstrong replied: “Probably, yes. I think that’s a good assessment. But I’m a firm believer in trying to push yourself to understand where the limits are.
“And, yeah, maybe now it’s a slight step back to understand a new level. And then hopefully with a bit of consistency, we can bump back up to that sort of flat-out pushing style again, and especially rallies that we have a bit more experience on.”
The second half of the season is staged entirely on gravel, and Armstrong has previous experience of three of the seven events (Acropolis, Estonia and, albeit never in a four-wheel-drive car, Finland).
“It would be nice to do Finland in one of these [Rally1] cars,” added Armstrong, who tested his Puma Rally1 in Finland this week. “But I’ve only ever done that rally once so to go in this year now, 10 years later after the first time I went there is going to be quite fun.
“Estonia I’ve always liked. I like the surface there, the way it’s a bit more sandy and you can bite the tire in. So, yeah, probably one of those fast gravel ones [is what I’m most looking forward to]. But I think Acropolis can be quite good for us if we have a similar approach to Japan and just try to stay out of trouble because that’s a rally where it could really pay off.”
Armstrong finished sixth overall on ERC edition of Rally Estonia in 2024
Armstrong outlined that he’s hoping to get his M-Sport Ford further up the leaderboard in the upcoming events, too.
“If we can be more consistent and then up the pace as we go along then that will be a good goal,” he said.
“I think if we have some clean rallies, maybe a couple of top-five finishes could be quite a good thing for the season. OK, the podium is going to be tricky but we never know what can happen.
“Croatia was really, really good and we maybe should have… or we didn’t quite know what we were doing when we were there [fighting for a podium] but that’s sort of our attitude too – that we want to just be up with those guys.
“So, to us, it was kind of not normal to really push ourselves to be there. We want to get back there eventually.”
Words:Luke Barry
Tags: Jon Armstrong, WRC, WRC 2026
Publish Date June 14, 2026 DirtFish
https://dirtfish-editorial.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com/2026/06/iGyDewbW-WRC_JAP_26_ATMOSPHERE_1381-780x520.jpg June 14, 2026
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