Quote Originally Posted by AnttiL View Post
The principle is this:

in 2017 Wilson made a strategic decision to hire Ogier to win titles, and it was successful. Would he pay someone like Mikkelsen, Lappi or Breen to do the same? Would they ensure him titles? No and no.

That's the simplified look.

Contrary arguments that we discussed here multiple times before are:

Car development
2017 car was (mostly) capable from the onset, but even then there seemingly were a lot of changes introduced after Ogier came and during the first 3-4 months.
While I do not know the details I guess Tanak was taking part in the development of the car and was by that time relatively experience driver (3rd full WRC season, with some decent results).

Right now it seems the 2022 car development so far is by Matt Wilson, Fourmaux and Greensmith. Is that enough? (maybe it is, but it's definitely easy to doubt that)

Business
M-Sport needs to attract the paying and/or coming drivers to drive with them for their business model. If no driver can show that the car can fight in the top the paying/young guys will go elsewhere (Hyundai). See Loubet, Veiby, Solberg, a few years back they would automatically have been expected to go trough MSport.

As we discussed MSport can take the occasional "year off" (2005, 2016), but now their "year off" is already 2 years long.