Why the M-Sport journey delivered despite the odds
As a replacement for Elfyn Evans goes, Esapekka Lappi wasn’t a bad call for M-Sport when he joined the British team for 2020, essentially taking over the Toyota-bound Welshman’s Ford Fiesta WRC.
Fourth on the Monte and fifth in Sweden represented a decent start for the Anglo-Finnish alliance and things were looking promising in Mexico after six stages. Until disaster struck.
“Mexico was getting better again but then we had the fire and then Covid,” M-Sport team boss Richard Millener says. “That cost us closer to £600,000 and we never managed to catch up because our testing stopped and our season kind of came to an end.
“It was difficult because
‘EP’ obviously wants to win and competing against the other teams who are testing when you’re doing absolutely nothing is quite hard and it was understandable that it was frustrating for him, it was frustrating for myself and the team, but we didn’t have the budget.
“When you look at the amount of time he had in the car it was hardly anything. Over the course of the year, you’d expect a normal driver to be doing 10-15 days of testing plus all the rallies. He did seven rallies and three days of testing so it’s really not so much. But we had a lot of positive feedback from the guys, he’s very experienced and he’s a WRC winner. At the end of the day, you’ve got to be good to do that.”
Asked if Lappi is on M-Sport’s radar for a drive in 2022 when the Rally1 rules come on stream, Millener is less committal.
“The longer you’re out of a car the harder it is to turn it around and if we’re being totally honest, we’re concentrating on the three guys [Adrien Fourmaux, Gus Greensmith and Teemu Suninen] we have at the moment. Anything can happen and it wouldn’t be a complete no. I’ve never had a problem with him, he would bring a lot to the team and I like him as a person. But, ultimately, it would still come down to driver budgets for us.”