Andreas Mikkelsen is aiming to put a WRC2 championship challenge together this season after all, but doesn’t expect to have the luxury of a dropped score.
Believing he was off to Hyundai to drive an i20 N Rally1 before the team made a late move for Esapekka Lappi instead, Mikkelsen was left without a drive for the start of 2023.
But the 2021 WRC2 champion and three-time World Rally winner returned for Rally of Portugal where he was third in WRC2 before winning Rally Italy Sardinia last month.
Mikkelsen had no plans beyond Sardinia, but has managed to secure entries for both next week’s Rally Estonia and then Rally Finland two weeks later, and depending on results is hoping to build a championship campaign.
The Norwegian is currently sixth in the championship, but every driver ahead of him has started at least one more event.
“Sardinia and Portugal were always in the plan. Still I don’t know if I will do the full championship or not, but at least we’ve managed to do Estonia and Finland,” Mikkelsen told DirtFish.
“It was a bit frustrating in Portugal with that puncture which put us out of place. OK I feel the win in Sardinia was handed a bit to us from Adrien [Fourmaux], but at the end of the day I know that if I have a DNF for sure I will not do the full championship.
“I think what is realistic is that I try to do the championship doing six rounds and not seven like the other guys do – they can take away their worst result – so let’s see what’s possible.
“It depends on the results from the next rallies, of course.”
Mikkelsen has strong form on both events but particularly Estonia, having won WRC2 there for both of the past two seasons.
“Of course, I would like to do every round,” he added.
“It’s always nice to have the chance to become world champion. We were in 2021. I don’t think that’s necessarily really important for my career, but anyway it’s a nice title to have.
“So if we can have more rallies and we can fight for the championship, that’s really cool. That would be perfect.”
If winning the championship isn’t what’s really important for Mikkelsen’s career, what is?
“At the moment, it’s hard to say,” he said.
“It’s so limited the amount of positions in the WRC. Of course I hope for another chance – maybe it will never come, I don’t know – but I just need to make sure I’m in the position that if the opportunity comes along then we are the proven let’s say candidate, because normally they take up guys from WRC2.
“I understand it’s a new generation now of course, they want to look for young drivers but at the same time they want to have ambitions to win the championship and they want experienced drivers who can deliver results straight away.
“I think we are definitely one of them, so I just need to keep myself let’s say warm and doing these WRC2 events, I can still showcase my skills and I think it’s also good fun to drive a WRC2 car – it’s not slow!
“It’s still very good fun and it’s also nice to work with Škoda. I’ve been working with them for a very long time and many times in my career so it’s nice to drive the new car and showcase what that car can do.
I feel very confident with the car on fast roads, so when we come to Estonia the car should be really goodAndreas Mikkelsen
“It’s nice in many aspects but for sure the main aspect is to keep myself warm and hope to be back in WRC in the future at some point.”
Mikkelsen wasn’t totally at one with the new Fabia RS Rally2 earlier in the season – commenting that he didn’t feel “as one” as he did in the older Fabia Rally2 evo model.
But the 34-year-old is feeling confident ahead of next week.
“I feel very confident with the car on fast roads, so when we come to Estonia and the fast rallies the car should be really good,” he said.
“In Portugal and Sardinia, even though I have a lot of time in the car when doing testing and development, it’s not like I’m doing setup for myself on those tests, you know?
“You sit in the car and it’s a full plan that we have to go through with the engineers, so at the end of the day I spent a lot of time in the car but not like how I would like to drive it.
“It was just in the pre-event test where we really started to focus on my setup and when you’re doing testing it’s always different from rallying. So when I thought I had found a good setup on my test, I came to the rally and it’s always different when you explore the roads.
“So with the experience we gained in Portugal and the car was really great in Sardinia, then I can’t really complain about anything. I’m not worried that I will not feel good in the car.
“I felt good in Sardinia and I know the car is very capable on fast roads which is coming now in Estonia, so I feel really comfortable.”
