If Toyota does not get anyone else than Ogier, Evans and Rovanpera and if MSport only aims for one drvier besides Suninen and Greensmith it's really the worst case scenario for driver seats.

In that case I think it's between Mikkelsen and Lappi with Latvala a bit distant third option.

Mikkelsen is a known stable fast driver (compared to all others left) with still some future potential. He is 2 years younger than Tanak (at this point in 2017 Tanak only won 2 rallies for example), 4 years younger than Latvala, 1,5 year younger than Evans (with about same number of starts with WRC car) and only 1,5 year older than Lappi.

Lappi has much fewer WRC starts so he can be seen as having more potential for the future. On the other hand he has been quite unstable both in Citroen and also most of 2018 with Toyota. A big potential issue might be his management who doesn't want to "pay", so Malcolms business model might be an issue.

Altogether it's not an easy pick between these two and many details that we might never know about can decide the outcome.

Latvala is a distant third cause he is not stable and lately fast only on very few rallies. Since he is the driver with most starts in WRC ever and also older than others his potential for future development is pretty much exhausted. A big pluss might be Joukhis long business relationship with Malcolm though. In case MSport gets two new drivers it's quite likely Latvala might be one of them.



The others are imo out of the picture:

Breen and Paddon were free last year with much better recent record than this year and were seemingly completely ignored by MSport. Paddon has started at least 2 Hyundai-related projects in NZ so I don't see him suddenly leaving to drive for free at MSport. Breen is very likely to be offered WRC2 season at Hyundai.

Meeke is 10 and 11 years older than Mikkelsen and Lappi with basically no future potential and has been ignored by Malcolm multiple times before. Furthermore his crashing/car damage tendency would just not work at MSport that want to earn money.