ELFYN EVANS

9 7

In just about any other season in recent WRC history, Mikkelsen would have struggled to re-establish himself among the upperechelons of the WRC elite. Bewilderingly overlooked by Toyota for the 2017 season, Andreas seemed destined to be a bit-part player in his supporting role as WRC2 superstar. It’s fair to say had other drivers, most notably Meeke, Paddon and Sordo, not underdelivered, then Mikkelsen would most probably have still been playing that role. But it’s many years since we had a season of musical chairs like this one and Mikkelsen was always the dark shadow stalking those not making their mark. After slightly questionable outings with Citroen, the Handsome One came good. Has shown enough to be considered a real threat to Neuville’s number one status at Hyundai.

5

What a difference a year makes. Twelve months ago he was accepting his British Rally Championship winning trophy with the words: “Well, everyone knows I didn’t really want to be here.” Well, if we didn’t know where he wanted to be then, we most certainly do now. A breakthrough season for the likeable young Welshman that established him as one of the WRC elite. An agonising second place in Argentina might well have been the story of his season, but all that changed with a dominant win in extremely testing conditions on Rally GB. Has shown speed, consistency, maturity and determination in bucketloads this year and will benefit massively from being number two to Ogier at M-sport next year. Could we be celebrating a British WRC champion in 2018? Maybe a year too early, but don’t discount anything with the ever-improving Evans. Have we ever witnessed such a whirlwind of a debut in WRC machinery? The pace was there in Portugal, the stage wins came in Sardinia and then an incredible drive to his maiden win in Finland. We’ve been waiting patiently for too many years to see Lappi in the top flight and he didn’t disappoint – well, not in the first half of the season anyway. He struggled to get to grips with rallies he didn’t know towards the end of his season but has shown emphatically that he can handle the speed and performance of the new generation World Rally Cars. A cautionary note though: Lappi clearly tried to adjust his approach for the last couple of events and was a shadow of the driver we know and expect to see. He needs to learn from his mistakes, but I’d hate to see the edge that makes him so unpredictable and exciting beaten out of him.