Photo Credit: M-Sport News has broken this morning that Estonian Ott Tanak will compete in a fully fledged 14 round WRC campaign 2016 with DMACK, who are for the first team entering the fray of the WRC with the support of M-Sport. Tanak raced for the team in 2014 doing rallies in both a Fiesta RS WRC and an R5, before signing for M-Sport for his second full season in the WRC for 2015. DMACK are also the team Tanak drove for on his impressive WRC debut on Wales Rally GB back in 2011. Ott said, "“I’m very excited to be joining DMACK again and extremely motivated to carry on the hard work and get closer to the top. We have many good memories from 2014, the team is very hard-working and I know things have moved forward even more since then. We had a tough season but the speed was there and, now that we have much more WRC experience, we will only get better in the future." "This is a perfect programme for me, a chance to help DMACK progress and an opportunity for me to demonstrate both my and DMACK’s pace. I can’t wait to start the season in Monaco.” This news means a step up for the DMACK team, who have ambitions to be at the very top as managing director Dick Cormack explained. "We’ve been working on this programme for around six months as part of our three-year development plan. I genuinely believe the combination of M-Sport and Ott is the best platform to help us develop our WRC products and push for leading stage-times when the opportunity arises. " "DMACK has a clear strategy to challenge for the WRC title in the future and the only way to achieve this is to focus hard on product development and undertake a full WRC programme with the correct partners to prove our performance." Photo Credit: M-Sport The WRC rumour mill continues to turn, and today's news has further fueled the rumour that Mads Ostberg will be returning to M-Sport for 2016 after Tanak's seat has become vacant and the Norwegian stated he wanted a full WRC campaign for 2016, effectively ending his stint with Citroen Racing.
Neither of M-Sport's 2016 drivers have been confirmed, but Ostberg is a strong option and Elfyn Evans who has been with the team for 2 seasons now remains in the running. Personally, I predict those two will be M-Sport's factory pairing for 2016, but what do I know? Stick with This Is Rally for all the latest in the WRC off season.
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January 2018
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