M-Sport managing director Malcolm Wilson has told DirtFish that Teemu Suninen, who decided to leave M-Sport with immediate effect on Friday, wasn’t part of the team’s 2022 World Rally Championship plans anyway.
Suninen had been sharing the second Fiesta WRC and the Rally2 version with Adrien Fourmaux, but Fourmaux will now drive the WRC car for the remainder of the season.
Talking about Suninen’s departure, Wilson told DirtFish: “We’re happy with the arrangement – Teemu wasn’t going to be part of our plans for 2022, so we were happy to terminate where we were.
“That’s really the top and bottom of it. Once we’d made the decision that he wasn’t going to be in the car in 2022, we didn’t want to hold him back from anything else or any other irons he has in the fire.”
Having worked with Suninen for five years, Wilson said the door wouldn’t be closed on the 27-year-old.
“It’s a shame it didn’t work out,” said Wilson. “As you can imagine, nobody wanted it to work more than me. There’s no issue with Teemu at all – it’s an amicable arrangement and I wouldn’t rule out the potential to work with him again in the future.”
Asked about Fourmaux’s immediate future, Wilson added: “He will be in the car for the rest of the season.”
Wilson wouldn’t be drawn on whether this strengthened Fourmaux’s claim on a 2022 seat.
Fourmaux has been testing the team’s 2022 Ford Puma Rally1 in France this week, sharing the driving with M-Sport director and test driver Matthew Wilson.
