The team principal of M-Sport Ford, Richard Millener, believes that the three young drivers he has on his mind can fight for a podium place next year after Ott Tanak's departure from the team at the end of 2022.
Ott Tanak announced a month ago that he will rejoin Hyundai Motorsport in 2024 and, in fact, stated that M-Sport Ford did not discuss with him a potential extension to his contract for next season. The Malcolm Wilson's team is considering of investing in young drivers after the end of 2023 and Adrien Fourmaux is the most dominant name to lead the British squad for 2024 who was atypically the CER winner in WRC2 class and became the 2023 Champion at British championship. Gregoire Munster and Pierre-Louis Loubet are among the drivers who will join forces with him as the first one made his first two WRC appearances at the top level at Rally Chile and Central European Rally. On the other hand, Loubet impressed M-Sport Ford with his performance in 2022 as he claimed some stage wins and stole the lead from Sebastien Loeb at the end of Friday morning in Greece, but his results were very disappointing in 2023 which made the team to replace him with Fourmaux for Rally Japan. Alberto Heller also competed with the Puma Rally1 at Rally Chile last month and is aiming to take part in more rallies in 2024. Finally, it is rumored that Oliver Solberg will drive for M-Sport Ford, but the problem is that the team is already in discussions to extend their partnership with Red Bull which means that the Norwegian cannot carry with him his main sponsor, Monster, which is the rival energy drink company of RB.
"They’re the three drivers that would obviously come to mind as people that we would look at as they have experience in the car", Millener said.
"We have still got some work to do to make sure the budgets are available to be there next year, but I think if we run the juniors more consistently, we have shown what they can do and I think that is the goal.
"I do think there is podiums available for all of them if they are sensible with their drives.
"Winning outright is probably another step on, but there is no reason why we can’t be competitive".
Finally, he is referring on the rumors about Oliver Solberg who has Monster as his main sponsor: "We want to continue with Red Bull and there is a goal to continue together but we are still in discussions regarding what is possible.
"Red Bull, like all partners, are all interested in performance, but we have to be realistic on where we can be".
Source: Motorsport.com
Photo Credits: M-Sport
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