Richard Millener knows the challenges that Ott Tanak's arrival brought to M-Sport Ford and admits that there are small things that the team has to improve with the view of being consistent next year.
Ott Tanak announced his premature departure from Hyundai Motorsport at the end of Rally Spain and signed a contract with M-Sport Ford for 2023 earlier this month. Despite the fact that the Cumbria-based team faces financial issues the latest years and it seems that Puma is behind Yaris and i20N in terms of development, it managed to secure the 2019 WRC Champion for next season. Ford Performance helps the team to develop the Puma, but it is a question mark if M-Sport mechanics will be able to improve further the Puma in 2023 since FIA changed the sporting regulations which are related to the test days. From next January, all the WRC teams will have the opportunity to schedule tests which must last 21 days in total instead of 30.
"Signing Tanak has definitely lifted the mood in the workshop and the spirit", Millener said.
"At the same time, it brings its own challenges.
"We are going to have to up our game and we need to be the best we can be for Ott to have a chance of doing well next year.
"I don't think there is anything major we need to be changing, but we need to make sure every little thing that we can do is correct, and we are as prepared as we can be for events.
"We are very close to that already but there are no opportunities to have any issues because you have to be consistent and pretty much score on every event.
"We are going to have to focus as best as possible and make sure everyone is aware of what we need to do and how to do it, and make sure all the protocols we have are in place to ensure we can get the best performance possible to Ott and to the whole team.
"It is not necessarily a change but making sure we have everything at the highest level.
"This was difficult to achieve this year but I hope with a fresh reset we can easily get there.
"We just need to do the work from now until Monte Carlo to do that".
Finally, he is confident that M-Sport will try to be close to its rivals next year despite the test reduction: "I think we have got to keep developing as we have been and be very specific in the areas we do decide to develop in, versus the areas we don't think are relevant for us.
"We don't necessarily have all of the budget to try every single option and choose.
"We are just going to have to work extra hard from the physical testing to work out which elements and we will use or not".
Source: Motorsport.com
Photo Credits: M-Sport
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