WRC
2025 WRC Season Review: M-Sport Ford
M-Sport Ford World Rally Team’s 2025 FIA World Rally Championship campaign was not short of evidence.
Over the course of the season, the Ford Puma Rally1 repeatedly showed it had the pace to run at the front. Turning that pace into consistent results, however, remained the harder part.
The signs were there from the opening round. At Rallye Monte-Carlo, Grégoire Munster claimed the first WRC stage win of his career, a moment that confirmed his raw speed at the top level. Alongside him, Josh McErlean delivered a composed Rally1 debut to finish seventh overall, immediately showing an ability to manage risk and rhythm in the championship’s most demanding environment.
That pattern - potential followed by complication - became familiar. In Sweden, Mārtiņš Sesks returned to action with an assured sixth place on his first WRC appearance on snow, while Munster and McErlean both showed competitive pace before their weekends drifted away from the results their stage times suggested. Small errors, late incidents and changing conditions repeatedly proved costly.
Safari Rally Kenya stood out as an exception. In one of the season’s toughest events, M-Sport executed well. Munster emerged fifth overall with a stage win and Wolf Power Stage points, while McErlean fought through repairs and time loss to finish 10th. All Rally1 cars reached the finish, and for once the reward broadly matched the effort.
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Pure asphalt was more revealing. Rally Islas Canarias exposed how narrow the margins remain on dry Tarmac, with both Munster and McErlean struggling to unlock confidence and performance from the package. The result was modest, but the implications were longer lasting, shaping much of the team’s Tarmac work for the remainder of the year.
Gravel rallies through Portugal, Sardegna and Greece delivered a harsher mix. Portugal showed steady, closely matched pace between Munster and McErlean, but Sardegna and Acropolis again highlighted how quickly momentum can unravel. Incidents, punctures and mechanical issues turned both rallies into salvage operations, masking flashes of genuine speed.
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Encouragingly, the picture sharpened on fast gravel. Estonia brought a clean finish for all Rally1 entries, while Rally Finland marked one of the team’s most complete weekends. McErlean led the M-Sport charge with seventh overall, followed closely by Sesks and Munster, the result built on execution rather than attrition.
New events again tested adaptability. Rally del Paraguay proved punishing, with heavy impacts sidelining both Munster and McErlean before Sunday restarts. Chile offered a steadier reference, as Munster delivered another controlled top-10 finish, while McErlean’s rally was curtailed by a technical failure rather than a driving error.
Late-season asphalt showed tangible progress. McErlean matched his career-best result with seventh overall at Central European Rally, while Munster’s pace improved despite going off the road on day one. In Japan, Munster produced M-Sport’s strongest result of the season, finishing fifth overall after a disciplined drive on narrow, technical roads where mistakes were heavily punished.
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Then came Saudi Arabia - a rally that distilled the British team’s year into one weekend. Sesks produced one of the standout performances of the 2025 season, winning stages, leading a brand-new event and controlling the rally against established winners. That it ended in tyre mechanical heartbreak on the final day was harsh, but the message was unambiguous: M-Sport has access to rally-winning pace.
