After Mikkelsen's announcement, which drivers for the WRC in 2024?

The Toyota and Hyundai crews are full for the 2024 WRC season, unlike M-Sport Ford, which is walled in silence a month and a half before the start in Monte-Carlo.

The 2024 World Rally Championship season (WRC) is taking shape more and more while the month of December has barely begun. In terms of crews, the teams entered in Rally1 hybrid have made good progress. Let's recap.

ALSO READ > Andreas Mikkelsen returns to Hyundai alternating with Dani Sordo

Who do you think will fill the remaining seats? 👀 pic.twitter.com/xnnd7BBy1H

- World Rally Championship (@OfficialWRC) December 6, 2023

Toyota Gazoo Racing

Outgoing double champion Kalle Rovanperä will not participate in the entire 13 rounds of the calendar. The Finn needs to breathe, to clear his mind away from the tumult of rally, while practicing his hobby, drifting. He will share the wheel of the third Toyota Yaris with the French Sébastien Ogier, semi-retired since the end of 2021 but still eager to compete in a few world events.
The two starting drivers within the Japanese team will therefore be Elfyn Evans, 2023 vice-champion, and Takamoto Katsuta.

Elfyn Evans will lead TGR in 2024. © Nikos Katikis / DPPI

Hyundai Motorsport

Arriving at the start of 2023 as Team Director, Cyril Abiteboul has doubled down on strengthening the pilots. The former strongman of Renault en F1 took out the checkbook to secure the services of the 2019 world champion, Ott Tänak. The Estonian is delighted to return to Hyundai after a hiatus of only one year on the side of M-Sport Ford, a less dynamic structure in terms of development.

Figure of Hyundai since its return in WRC brand in 2014 Thierry Neuville will always be there. The Belgian will want to get rid of the imposing label of “Poulidor of rallying”, he who has finished 2nd in the Drivers' ranking five times over the last 10 years.

Ott Tänak was at Hyundai already in 2022. © Nikos Katikis / DPPI

The third i20 Rally1 will be shared between not two, but three drivers! A system that Hyundai had already favored in 2015 and 2016, where no less than four individuals shared a steering wheel. For 2024, veteran Dani Sordo will race in the rounds on rough gravel, while Andreas Mikkelsen, title holder in WRC2, returns to the premier category in the asphalt events and Esapekka Lappi (holder of a partial program) will subscribe to the meet on snow and fast dirt. Teemu Suninen is therefore the loser of this transfer window, he who had a partial program at Hyundai in 2023.

M Sport Ford

The third formation in the field is the only one not to have officially confirmed its drivers. The English team should only enter two cars per year, the economic situation not being good.

If all the planets align, the French flag should be stuck on the rear window of a Ford Puma. It would be in honor ofAdrien fourmaux, the outgoing champion of the British Rally Championship. The Northerner has recovered in 2023, with a Rally2 program less stressful than the pressure of Rally1 in 2021 and 2022.

Adrien Fourmaux has already driven the Ford Puma hybrid in 2022. © Nikos Katikis / DPPI

The Luxembourger Grégoire Munster should probably compete in several events thanks to his patron, the Greek Jourdan Serderidis, who retired this fall.