M-Sport Ford World Rally Teams

[doubled1978]

MSport catching up might also mean that development at Toyota and Hyundai slowed down (cause they appear evenly matched).

If that is the case what might be the reason:
- Waiting for the rules decision
- Not easy to develop these cars further

Hope it's the second.

I would think the second, the law of diminishing returns applies I suppose.
In very simplistic terms, Toyota have been very good at producing a neutral car that gives confidence, Hyundai went from an under steering car in the ‘17 spec, to a tail happy one and MSport did the opposite, tail happy to understeer. Hyundai with their resources, and drivers have improved quite a lot in a short space of time, MSport it has taken longer due to less resource.
I’m sure their is more nuance than that, but the way I see it, those are the broad strokes.

[mknight]

Sure after a while the improvements get smaller.

But still with the previous gen cars it looked like Toyota and Hyundai always kept improving (and MSport couldn't keep up after 2019).

Might be that the lack of active center diff, freeze on engine development and lower amount of testing is actually working?

[Eli]

Sure after a while the improvements get smaller.

But still with the previous gen cars it looked like Toyota and Hyundai always kept improving (and MSport couldn't keep up after 2019).

Might be that the lack of active center diff, freeze on engine development and lower amount of testing is actually working?

Well don’t forget Covid hampered them and while Hyundai & Toyota managed to keep up, M-Sport had a lot of their staff redundant so I’m sure that put them even further behind.

[Fast Eddie WRC]

/\
Thanks for all the positive comments people !

Fourmaux has certainly taken a great step this season and is almost on a par with the elite drivers (less than 0.2 sec/ km) as he states here:

https://rallyjournal.com/wrc-driver-...st-these-guys/

The Puma's speed and reliability has also been damn close to the others and there have been no complaints at all from any of the drivers (unlike Tanak last season). Even debutant Sesks was comfortable in the car and straight on good pace.

Its strange that the Team has finally been rewarded in the year when original expectations were so low. Long may it continue !

[macebig]

Mikkelsen (if he changes his mind) and Evans are pretty much the only realistic targets for M-Sport if they intend on having 2 fully competitive cars. Unless, Hyundai calls it quits and everyone is on the cards...

[skarderud]

I think several drivers without fulltime seats or wrc2 (Mikkelsen, Lappi, Solberg, etc), or drivers that don't deliver (Evans) looks to M-sport these days for next season, depends on money for most of them?
M-sport can run a 3 car team if someone can put in the money.

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