The World Rally Championship (WRC) is just a few weeks away from the start of the 2023 season, which, as always, opens with the Monte Carlo Rally, which will take place between January 19 and 22.
And with no technical changes scheduled for this second season of the hybrid car era, Driver movements have been the big news in this era of para. In fact, the three main teams in the championship are already defined for 2023.
Tänak and Malcolm Wilson, owner of M-Sport.
The big news is the departure of former world champion Ott Tänak from the Hyundai team, and his arrival at the M-Sport Ford World Rally Team, a team where the Estonian already raced in his early days as a professional driver.
M-Sport is the birthplace of the Tänak WRC race. In 2011, the Estonian made his WRC support class debut in an M-Sport car, scoring his first podium just 12 months later. In 2017, Tänak took his first win at Rally Italia, followed by a second win in Germany. These results, along with five other podium finishes that year, were crucial to M-Sport Ford’s historic manufacturers’ title.
Tänak in his good years with M-Sport.
Tänak then went to Toyota, a team with which in 2019 he won his only title so far world rally champion. To date he has 17 wins and 42 podiums in WRC.
Along with Tänak, the Frenchman Pierre-Louis Loubet will race in the M-Sport Ford World Rally Team, who had a partial season in the team during 2022, getting two fourth places. Adrien Fourmaux and Gus Greensmith will not continue with the team.
Toyota, the champion team, will maintain its 2022 lineup for this new campaign.
Toyota Gazoo Racing drivers.
The monarch Kalle Rovanpera will have the number 1 car, while the second unit will be in the hands of the British Elfyn Evans. Toyota’s third car will be owned by Japanese Takamoto Katsuta, who was promoted to the first team and will play the entire season, while French multi-champion Sebastien Ogier will only run a few rallies in a fourth car.
The Japanese firm wants to prevail for the fifth consecutive year in the drivers’ championship (Tänak, Ogier, Ogier and Rovanpera) and for the third consecutive year in the constructors’ world championship.
Neuville will lead Hyundai.
Finally there is Hyundai, which saw Tänak leave and is looking for a way to unseat Toyota. And for this, he announces a radical change in the leadership of the team and hired Frenchman Cyril Abiteboul, former director of the Renault Formula One team between 2014 and 2021, as the new team manager.
Well then, in Hyundai they confirmed that they will once again have the Belgian Thierry Neuville and the Spanish Dani Sordo, and added the Finn Esapekka Lappi and the Irish Craig Breen, the latter, from M-Sport. Neuville and Lappi, who left Toyota to join Hyundai, will be the starters, while the third car will be shared by Sordo and Breen.