Andreas Mikkelsen will make his World Rally Championship return on next month’s Rally Portugal, driving a Toksport Škoda Fabia RS Rally2.
Mikkelsen hasn’t competed in the WRC since his troubled run on September’s Acropolis Rally Greece.
He edged extremely close to a Rally1 drive with Hyundai Motorsport but was beaten to the drive by Esapekka Lappi.
That left Mikkelsen without a place within Toksport’s lineup for 2023, which is running drivers such as Oliver Solberg, Gus Greensmith, Emil Lindholm and Sami Pajari in WRC2.
But in February DirtFish learned that Mikkelsen was working on securing a select WRC2 program this season, though, to continue to prove his worth to factory teams.
The first round of that campaign will be Portugal (May 11-14), an event Mikkelsen led last year before his engine failed.
“I want to win the rallies, so it’s not about being super-fast for five stages and then retiring. I want to win the rallies that I’m doing,” Mikkelsen told DirtFish earlier this month.
“That means of course be fast, but you have to manage events as well. The target will not change dramatically from last year.
“Every rally that I did last year for sure I wanted to win as well but of course a championship you need to think about.
“I will drive the rallies now and I will focus event by event, trying to win them, and let’s see how many rallies we will do in the end.”
Mikkelsen’s WRC2 competition in Portugal will include fellow front-line WRC drivers Solberg, Greensmith, Teemu Suninen and Adrien Fourmaux.
Eight Rally1 cars have been entered into the event.
