2022 WRC News & Rumours

[the sniper]

Is there something wrong about how works teams choose new drivers these days? First Katsuta and Arai at Toyota, then Lefebvre and Camilli, now Fourmaux... Have they ever won anything important before joining works teams?

For example, if you look at WRC2 results from Croatia, both Lefebvre and Camilli were beaten by Rossel, Kajto, Lindholm, Gryazin and Ingram quite easily:
https://rally-base.com/2022/croatia-...61&ssGroupId=1

Arai and Katsuta can't even win a single ERC event, but were chosen for works drivers...

There's something wrong with it, but it's not a case of backing the wrong horse, having not identified the best of the best. Arai and Katsuta were chosen because they were the best Japanese options when they needed a Japanese prospect. Their seats were never intended to be allocated purely on merit, unfortunately. But their seats/entries probably wouldn't exists at all if they weren't being paid for with the intention of filling them with someone Japanese, so nobody lost any opportunity out of it.

It's like the situation with Gus Greensmith at various points. Would his seat exist to be filled if he weren't paying for it?

Likewise with the French guys, would they have got their works seats without their backing or their nationality (particularly in the case of Lefebvre)?

Re Fourmaux, he has a lot more pressure to produce than the likes of Katsuta and Solberg.

The French 'development' system got broken by Loeb and Ogier being unnaturally good, mere talented mortals couldn't replicate their great leaps forward to the big league, for which they are considered failures.