M-Sport's Elfyn Evans sa💃ys his fourth place finish on Rally Italia Sardegna was a lot more than he expected after his "disastrous" start.

The Welshman lost more than three minutes on the opening morning with driveshaft issues leaving him a lowly 17th and then in🐟 the aft🍸ernoon he struggled for confidence.

However, he gradually got more in the groove the following day and hau𒁏led himself back up the leaderboard, peaking with a third fastest time on the final day.

Speaking at the finish he admitted that the rhythm he had enjoyed at th♏e start of the season h♔ad still not fully returned, but he was nonetheless a lot happier.

"After a disastrous Friday I was really disappointed and finishing fourth then was🌺 unthinkable," Evans said immediately after the final stage.

"I wish that the rhythm was different on Friday, but we are still here. Not the performance of the yea💯r, certainly, but we [still] got some good experie🎃nce of the whole rally."

"It's a very unexpected result after the issues we had on Friday," he e💖laborated back in service. "It's fair to say that we had a difficult start 💖for various reasons.

"Obviously we had the issue with the driveshaft on Friday morning a🎉nd then after that I just couldn't seem to get into the flow of 🍰it.

"We needed to start again on Saturday and I think it was a fairly solid run. We didn't take any risks or chances but had a good rhythm which was a nice change from the day before! By the end of the day our fifth place was secured and when Mads [Ostberg] encountered problems we moved up another place on Sunday.

"It's been a difficult couple of rallies, but the feeling is gꦇradually coming back and I'm sure we'll be back on it in Poland. It's a fast rally so it could be a bit of a shock to the system, but hopefully we can get up to speed and have a go༺od run."