IMCA Canada

M-Sport confirmed participation in WRC 2019

The team of Malcolm Wilson became the last team to apply for participation in the 2019 World Rally Championship.

Having been left at the end of the 2012 season without Ford's financial support, M-Sport is forced to somehow make ends meet every year in order to maintain its presence in the WRC. Over the years, the team has repeatedly raised the issue of leaving the championship, but each time Wilson found a way out of the situation, continuing the business started in 1997.

So it turned out this time. A few days before the deadline for submitting applications for participation in the championship, Malcolm asked the FIA to extend it, citing the lack of a budget. And at the very moment when everyone was already waiting for a repeat of the history of 2015, when the Federation gave M-Sport time right up to January 2016, the team appeared in the official list of factory teams published on Friday - no extension was required.

On this occasion, M-Sport issued a press release in which it confirmed both its participation in the series and the composition of the pilots for the next year. As expected, Elfin Evans and Teemu Suninen remained her strike pilots. Moreover, in the first two stages of the season, together with M-Sport, former Skoda driver Pontus Tidemand will also start, who will drive the Monte Carlo rally and Sweden at the wheel of a Ford Fiesta WRC.

Another interesting news was the self-removal of Malcolm Wilson from the position of team leader. Now this role has gone to former M-Sport coordinator Richard Millener, and Wilson himself will focus exclusively on the business side of his company's activities.

The first stage of the 2019 World Championship, the Monte Carlo Rally, will be held from January 24 to 27.