Josh McErlean walked out of the Canary Islands with the kind of week he has been chasing since stepping up to a full World Rally Championship campaign with M-Sport Ford. Eighth overall, a clean rally from start to finish, and — for the first time in 2026 — a confirmed pace edge over teammate Jon Armstrong on a tarmac event.
The 25-year-old Northern Irishman had endured a punishing run since the season opener, with Croatia in particular proving a confidence drainer. The team's challenge with the new Rally1 hybrid package and McErlean's relative inexperience at this level had compounded each other. Canary Islands changed the trajectory.
"It's nice to get a clean rally," McErlean told DirtFish at the finish. "Obviously it's been a while since one of these."
The headline number from the weekend was a 0.31-second-per-kilometre improvement on his 2025 performance at the same event — a meaningful step on tarmac, where the Ford Puma Rally1 has historically struggled against the Toyotas and Hyundais.
McErlean refused to frame the result purely as a personal-versus-teammate comparison, but the breakthrough against Armstrong matters for both his confidence and his standing inside M-Sport.
"We've seen this at points last year with team-mates and focusing on what they're doing," McErlean said. "Battling with Jon throughout the weekend was a big step forward since Croatia, and to match him on tarmac…"
"Yeah, 100%," he said. "I think coming here we knew after Croatia we had to do something to step it up."
That step now arrives at exactly the right moment. WRC Rally Portugal — beginning at Coimbra on May 14 — is the event McErlean has flagged for months as his most important target of the season. He has previous WRC2 stage wins on Portuguese gravel and has consistently shown well at the rally before this Rally1 step.
"But now we go to Portugal — probably the biggest one for me in the year," McErlean said. "I think it's probably the event I've got the most experience of."
That experience is more than statistical. McErlean took his first WRC2 podium in Portugal in 2022 with the Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy and TokSport, and has used the event as a marker of progress at every level since. Rally Portugal's mix of fast, flowing Lousa stages and the technical Fafe spectator stage rewards a driver willing to commit early — and McErlean has historically been quick to do that.
There are also softer dynamics now in his favour. McErlean has spoken openly about the burden of being the underdog in a Rally1 seat, and the small psychological cost of arriving at events where the paddock does not yet expect performance from him.
"Everyone doesn't expect so much of you coming in as an underdog," he reflected earlier in the campaign. "Maybe you don't deserve to be here or something."
After Croatia, in characteristic style, he had captured the broader feeling with a one-liner. "If anyone knows where I can buy some luck, I have my credit card here waiting." On the evidence of the Canary Islands, the luck has finally arrived organically.
Armstrong, who stepped up to the Rally1 seat for 2026, will take his own lessons from the weekend. M-Sport boss Richard Millener has consistently described the season as a developmental year for both drivers, with Portugal as the natural inflection point.
"I'm sure there are definitely good times ahead," McErlean said in the lead-up to Croatia — words that, after Canary Islands, finally look prophetic rather than aspirational.
---
*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/mcerlean-wrc-canary-islands-step-forward-portugal-2026-m-sport). Visit for full coverage.*