Yoann Bonato made the most of his debut outing in a Citroen C2 S1600 on the Rallye de France-Tour de Corse last weekend, putting many of his rivals in the FIA Junior Rally Championship in the shade.

The Frenchman, who had used a C2-R2 in Finland, Germany and Catalunya, where he dominated the R2 class, put in an extremely impressive performance over the three-days - setting the pace in the JRC in every single stage on day 2, as well as taking two more scratch times on the final day.

He would have undoubtedly been in contention for the win too, had he not picked up a puncture on the first leg, something that dropped him from fourth overall, just 1.8 seconds behind Per-Gunnar Andersson, to eleventh, more than 2.5 minutes back.

In the end though his performance was rewarded with his first place on the rostrum - albeit only after fellow Citroen C2 S1600 runner, Conrad Rautenbach lost out in the penultimate test when he too had a puncture.

“It's quite a good result – I'm very happy for this rally,” said the FFSA (French Motor Sport Federation) backed man.

“We've had no problems with the car and without the punctures I had throughout the weekend, I could have had an even better result.

“But in spite of those problems we were able to climb a lot of positions and third is good."

Yves Matton, Citroen Sport's customer competitions manager, meanwhile felt that Yoann definitely made his mark.

“He has really confirmed the potential that he showed on his previous three rallies with the Citroen C2-R2,” Matton added. “Unfortunately, a puncture during the opening leg deprived him of the chance to fight for a victory that I believe he would have been fully capable of.”