Quote Originally Posted by mknight View Post
Did you forget Rossel?

His problem might be that Fourmaux and Loubet are likely competiting for lot of the same funding.
For me, Rossel is in the game with Lindholm and Huttunen if a young driver (with no Top-class experience I mean, excluding Huttunen’s outing in Finland) has to be promoted but he has multiple issues against him:
- as you said, clearly, there is the funding issue with multiple aspects: the fact that he is a Stellantis guy so he will not benefit from a manufacturer help for Rally1 + as you said, the potential conflicts with Loubet and Fourmaux to find fundings (such as FFSA help=French Federation) even if these two guys for the moment (especially Fourmaux) won’t benefit from their season. The only positive point for him is that he has Yacco’s help this year (former main sponsor of Fourmaux which helped him to step in RC1) whereas he was really short some years in the past. But, yeah, FFSA’s help will be probably critical next year for a Frenchman to stay one way or another (full-time or part-time) in M-Sport main team and probably the FFSA will have to make a choice between the 3 guys.
- if rumors about the calendar is correct with less tarmac and even if he has improved on technical gravel, he will be clearly a disadvantage for him against his competitors like Loubet, Lindholm or Huttunen.
- between him and Lindholm, there is not a big gap and they sound a step behind Mikkelsen (with Huttunen not that far also and sounds more easy on funding). So he is not a no-brainer choice.

Still I really hope he could have an opportunity.