ASM Motorsport and Osian Pryce have joined forces to give FIA R4-spec rally car its world competition debut on the Rallye Ciudad de Granada this weekend.

The Aberangell star and co-driver Dale Furniss from Llanfyllin will drive an Etios R4 on the penultimate round of the Spanish Gravel Rally Championship.

The event will be the 25-year old Welsh driver’s first overseas gravel rally since he finished fourth in WRC2 on the 2017 Rally Finland in an M-Sport Fiesta R5.

The R4-spec Etios that Pryce will drive will be run by Barcelona-based ASM Motorsport, a team that has created a separate R4 Rally Cars Division, dedicated to the construction, on-event running and worldwide growth of the new FIA-homologated category.

Pryce has been seeded at number nine on the 55-car Rallye Ciudad de Granada entry list, within a top 20 dominated by high-powered four-wheel drive cars.

Pryce said: “It’s nice to be asked to give the R4-spec car its world competition debut, and it’s come at the right time for me as I’ve been working hard on getting back to four-wheel drive international competition.

"I visited the ASM Motorsport headquarters last week to see the car in the workshop, and my first impressions were extremely good.

"When you sit in the driver’s seat, everything feels just right and you can instantly tell it’s a very cleverly designed and extremely well engineered car.

"It feels very driver friendly inside the cockpit, with a good interface on the dash. You just sink into the car and it immediately feels part of you. It really looks like it has all the ingredients to be a very good and competitive car.

“I’m looking forward to driving the R4-spec car for the first time, but that won’t be until the official rally shakedown on Friday.

"We hope to do as many passes over the shakedown stage as possible to get used to the car as best we can in such a short space of time.

"The event itself will be a good challenge, as are all the Spanish Gravel Championship rounds. The stages look to be more twisty and technical rather than high speed, so it will be extremely interesting to see how the R4-spec car compares to the more powerful, and more expensive, cars around us."

Pryce was also relishing the prospect of another overseas gravel rally.

"It’s about sixteen months since our last overseas gravel rally in a four-wheel drive car, so Dale and I are super excited to be out competing on the international stage once again," said Pryce.

"Especially as we’ll be making rally history by giving the R4-spec car its world competition debut.”