All is set for World Rally Championship Rallye Monte Carlo season opening from Thursday next week.
And excitement is building up after the 2019 world champion Ott Tanak whose return to M-Sport Ford to shore up dwindling fortunes of the British manufacturer is awaited in earnest after videos of his test runs on the Ford Puma R1 Hybrid hit the media recently.
The Estonian was the runner-up behind Kalle Rovanpera of Finland in the drivers’ world championship last season with three outright victories for Hyundai i20 of the five scored by the South Korean car maker in the World Rally Championship.
Thierry Neuville of Belgium won twice in Greece and Japan.
Tanak is going into the 2023 season confident of repeating his 2019 successful season as world champion for Toyota.
M-Sport Ford was the last manufacturer to unveil its 2023 drivers’ line-up recently after managing to sign Tanak from Hyundai, retaining Pierre-Louis Loubet and letting go of Gus Smith and Craig Breen.
Privateer Greek Jourdan Serderidis will drive a third Puma Rally1 but has not been nominated to score manufacturer’s points.
Breen has returned to Hyundai team where he started while Smith has signed up with Toksport Skoda team which will field R5 Skoda Fazia R2 in the Rally2 class for the whole season.
Tanak, and the 2022 Hyundai team demonstrated the potential of the i20 Hybrid by winning in Estonia, Finland and Belgium.
Thierry Neuville, new signing Esapekka Lappi and Dani Sordo complete Hyundai’s line up. Sordo , who returns to Monte Carlo after missing last year, is seat-sharing for a sixth consecutive season in 2023 with Breen.
World champion Kalle Rovanpera will lead Toyota’s double-edged drivers’ and manufacturers’ titles defences.
Toyota faces its toughest test in recent years especially from Hyundai and M-Sport Ford which showed a lot of potential despite suffering from reliability issues.
Rovanperä leads the entry list of 76 in Monte Carlo which has attracted 10 Rally1 cars from the three manufacturers — Toyota, Ford and Hyundai.
Toyota has the highest number of drivers in four Yaris R1 machines. Rovanperä, Elfyn Evans and former world champion Sebastien Ogier are all nominated for manufacturer’s points while Takamoto Katsuta will drive a fourth GR Yaris Rally1 for individual points.
The Rally2 category has class and talent. Frenchman Adrien Fourmaux heads a 27-strong field of WRC2 cars in Monte Carlo.
M-Sport is determined to rule in this class too led by Fourmaux, a former Rally1 driver and supported by Belgian Grégoire Munster — the winner of the WRC2 round in Japan in a Hyundai last November.
Erik Cais will also drive a new Skoda Fabia on the Monte Carlo Rally as he makes the switch from M-Sport power this season. But perhaps the highest-profile entrant in a new Škoda is 1994 Monte Carlo winner François Delecour.
Chris Ingram ensures the old Fabia Rally2 evo remains part of the equation too as he begins his quest to become WRC2 champion.
Citroën will be represented by 2022 Belgian Rally champion Stéphane Lefebvre, 2021 WRC3 champion Yohan Rossel, rising Spaniard Alejandro Cachón and American ace Sean Johnston.
There will be four Hyundai i20 N Rally2s competing in WRC2 on round one, with Irish drivers Josh McErlean – who’ll be co-driven by John Rowan this year after James Fulton moved alongside Breen – and William Creighton the top seeds.
Both reigning WRC2 champion Emil Lindholm and ex M-Sport driver Gus Greensmith will be title contenders in Toksport Škodas, but their seasons won’t get underway until Rally Sweden and México respectively.
All in all Monte Carlo will also offer an early glimpse of revved up manufacturers cars which have undergone serious testing in the first full season the hybrid era at the WRC.
The WRC landscape appears to be changing for the better following relaxation of rules by the manufacturers to lend out Rally1 cars, traditionally a preserve of factory-hired drivers, to privateers like Serderidis in the Ford Puma R1 Hybrid.
There are speculations of many more drivers trying their hands on these high end hyper competition machines. BY DAILY NATION