Devine and Williams step up to JWRC

Britain and Ireland will be represented in a 15-strong Junior World Rally Championship field with Junior British Rally champion Callum Devine and Tom Williams starting the series.

Crews from 12 different countries from as far afield as Chile and New Zealand will start the opening round at Rally Sweden next month, before heading to the Tour of Corsica, Rally Portugal, Rally Finland and Rally Turkey.

Devine, who used a Ford Fiesta R2T for two events on the way to British championship success last year, has never driven on snow before having done most of his competition on asphalt events.

“We’re used to not having testing, like we did with the R5 in GB last year,” said Devine. “Those guys [in the JWRC] are all quick, and all testing on snow at the moment. If we can finish close to the top three on each round, and show our pace where we can, we’ll be happy with that.”

Williams was a class winner in the Cadet division in the BRC last year for older R2-specification cars.

“Every season we’ve made a big step in terms of the championship we’re doing,” said Williams, “we want to learn and progress and driving in the same championship as guys like Emil [Bergkvist] can only be a good thing.”

Swede Bergkvist will step back from WRC2 to JWRC in the hunt for the new Ford Fiesta R5, which will be awarded by M-sport at the end of the five-round series.

The 15th driver Umberto Accornero starts at round two in Corsica.