Gus Greensmith has confirmed to DirtFish that Jonas Andersson will co-drive for him on all 13 rounds of next year’s World Rally Championship.
Greensmith and Andersson first worked together on last month’s Monza Rally as Chris Patterson, brought in to replace Elliott Edmondson after two rounds of the 2021 season, retired after the penultimate round in Spain.
Throughout the Monza weekend Greensmith’s deal to continue with M-Sport Ford in 2022 was announced, and he spoke positively about his relationship with Andersson which, at that stage, had only been agreed for the 2021 season finale.
But asked by DirtFish this week if Andersson would indeed be joining Greensmith for Monte, Greensmith confirmed: “It’s all agreed for next year now.”
Quizzed if that was for the full season, he replied: “Yes”.
“It was surprising for me how well it went but more so in the way he hadn’t delivered English pacenotes for a very, very long time,” Greensmith added on his Swedish co-driver.
“So that was the main concern because we all agreed that compared to the personality character fit with Chris he was the best option, most similar, so that’s what kind of drew us to him and obviously for his age it’s kind of mental how much he’s done in the WRC.
“But then literally after the first morning, probably stage three, that’s when it was basically flowing as well as it did with Chris in terms of the pacenotes being delivered and from that point on, it was never an issue which was kind of the big, big question we had to answer.
“So yeah, we were happy with that.”
Although nothing was ever publicly communicated immediately after the event, Greensmith said it didn’t take long for the pair to agree to continue their partnership.
“We said to each other pretty much the Sunday night of the event that we both really enjoyed the weekend and the event together.
“And that was the thing, it was a good laugh in the car but then again it was also very serious and we were trying to get the best out of what we could.
“So I think we pretty quickly both agreed that we would want to carry this on for next year.”
Next season will be Andersson’s seventh full season in the WRC with a constructor team.
His first was back in 2008 alongside Per-Gunnar Andersson with Suzuki before five consecutive years alongside Mads Østberg for the Adapta World Rally Team, M-Sport and Citroën between 2011-15.
More recently he has co-driven for Pontus Tidemand and Ole Christian Veiby before teaming up with Greensmith.
Greensmith meanwhile will embark on his third full season of top-line competition when he starts next month’s Monte Carlo Rally in a Ford Puma Rally1.
