M-SPORT GEARED UP FOR WRC’S HECTIC TURNAROUND
British team up against it with three events in a month
M-Sport Ford boss Richard Millener has given Motorsport News an insight into the challenges the British team will face when it takes on three world championship rallies in a month after the Ypres Rally was added to the schedule.
Following the Rally Estonia season restart ending on September 6, the WRC will head to Marmaris in Turkey 1865 miles away in time for the event getting underway on September 17. Then it’s back north to
Belgium, a distance of 2175 kilometres, for the Ypres Rally on October 2.
But with no opportunity to return to its Cumbria base in between, M-Sport will rebuild and prepare its Ford Fiesta WRCs on the road.
Busy times ahead
Millener told Motorsport News: “We would have to re-prep our cars on location. That will be OK after Estonia but Turkey is the hardest rally on the calendar and then we’ve got to make some cars that are straight and true to go and do a Tarmac event like Ypres.
“We only have one chassis per driver, the other teams are lucky to have more. But that’s our challenge and something we’ll deal with in true M-Sport style.”
By road and sea
The boat carrying M-Sport’s trucks is due to set sail from Turkey on September 22 and arrive in Italy three days later. It’s then a 36-hour road trip to Ypres where an intense period awaits from September 26, according to Millener.
“We’ll have some of Saturday, Sunday and Monday to re-prep because you have to set up on Tuesday and Wednesday, it’s scrutineering on Thursday and shakedown on Friday.
“We’re lucky we know a lot of people and can find workshops, but we’re going from gravel to Tarmac. We’ll be carrying 100 wheel rims in our trucks for gravel and we’ll have to swap them for 200 wheel rims for Tarmac because there are more [tyre] choices and you need to have all the options ready just in case, so it’s more than likely we’ll have to send another vehicle over from the UK to swap all the bits over to take away the gravel parts and bring the Tarmac parts
“The uprights, for example, we would strip them down from gravel, check them, rebuild them, put them into Tarmac [specification] but we won’t have time to do that so we’ll have to bring a separate set of Tarmac uprights ready to bolt on. It’s doable but it won’t be easy.”
Three cars planned
M-Sport hopes to restart the WRC season with a minimum of two Fiesta World Rally Cars for Esapekka Lappi and Teemu Suninen. However, Gus Greensmith’s programme is not yet confirmed. Millener said: “Gus would like to do as many events as he can and we’re still trying to do our WRC 2 programme with Adrien [Fourmaux]. But it changes week by week and our budgets change week by week so it’s going to be difficult.”
Finns fix it for Lappi
Esapekka Lappi will get a much-needed opportunity to practice for Rally Estonia in his native Finland next weekend.
Lappi hasn’t competed since Rally Mexico in mid-March and is unlikely to test before the Baltic round.
But he’s been handed an entry on the Jamsan Aijat Ralli on August 8 in a latest- specification Ford Fiesta WRC run by former driver Janne Tuohino’s JanPro Racing outfit.
Budget woes bite
Millener also conceded that the lack of pre-Estonia running is linked to budgetary constraints with the squad.
He added: “We may look to do something in Greystoke to give our drivers the chance to get up to speed, but we are going to have to be quite controlled on our budget for the remainder of the year, unfortunately.”