Romet Jürgenson wasn’t meant to win this year’s Junior World Rally Championship. As one of four drivers on the FIA’s Rally Star program, the target was to win JWRC in 2025.
But Jürgenson – and fellow title contender Taylor Gill, who eventually slipped to fourth in the standings – overachieved. With a win, two second places and 19 points-paying stage wins to his name, the 24-year-old Estonian was a thoroughly deserving champion.
What now? Having already achieved next year’s goal, where does Jürgenson go from here?
And as for the Gill and the Rally Star program’s other drivers, Max Smart and José Caparó, is that it? Good effort, lads. Thanks, but no thanks.
Turns out, it’s good news all round. Jürgenson can look forward to a full attack on WRC2, while two of his classmates get another crack at JWRC.
It's likely that two FIA Rally Star drivers will compete in next year's Junior WRC
“For me, the job of Rally Star will be done when we will have one driver in a Rally1 car in a factory team,” says Rally Star project manager Jérôme Roussel.
“So until this is done, I will consider we still need to push on the way. It’s still long [away], but for sure, if you look at the Junior WRC history, for me, all the drivers with obvious talent, they all had their chance at the highest level sooner or later.
“At the moment, my focus is to make sure that they can demonstrate their talents, that the Rally1 teams can put them on their radar for the future, can have a regular look on them. If this is done, then we would have succeeded in our mission.”
Regardless of his Rally Star status, Jürgenson’s JWRC crown comes with a prize supplied by M-Sport of tackling at least four WRC2 rounds in the firm’s Ford Fiesta Rally2 next year. And instead of Rally Star funding a now unnecessary second year in JWRC, it will redirect its budget to supplement the M-Sport prize and enable its standard bearer to contest a full WRC2 campaign.
When you have this Rally Star status, you must use it to knock at all possible doorsJérôme Roussel
Roussel considers it a natural progression from what both Jürgenson and Gill have already been doing: leveraging their status on the scheme to earn further opportunities.
“When you have this Rally Star status, you must use it to knock at all possible doors and create more opportunities than the one we give,” Roussel explains. “So, Romet did this from last year where he could buy a Rally4 car. That car became a Rally3 this year and he could participate in some [other] rallies. But this would have been impossible without the Rally Star status and he used it very well.
“Every driver, when we selected them, I told them we will do a lot for you but you need to make sure that you will do more and you must create your own opportunities. Taylor did the same by setting himself up in Finland and managing to do one national round of the Finnish championship this summer and many testing sessions – many things that you don’t see, but things that helped him to increase his knowledge, his experience.”
Roussel wants the drivers to use the platform the FIA has given them to create more opportunities
FIA deputy president for sport Robert Reid, who chairs the Rally Star selection committee, is equally delighted with the progress of his chargers.
“It’s easy to say, ‘Oh yes, we’d absolute confidence in the system’,” says the 2001 world champion co-driver. “But I think for me – and I’ll come at it maybe from an angle you don’t expect – if you take turning skills into talent, I was always confident that we could put a structure in place, that we could take people with skills and turn them into being talented.
“Now, whether we thought we could take somebody who was a gamer and get them to win a Junior world championship in two years, I think we’re a year ahead of target. The target always was to try and get someone to win Junior in the second year.
“I think we shouldn’t forget any of them really. We’ve got Taylor and Romet that have been up the sharp end. If you look at the progress Max has made, I think this [Acropolis] is maybe his 10th rally ever. Again, I’m a big believer in potential over talent, or potential over performance, and obviously we all saw something in him at that selection event that allowed us to be able to say, ‘OK, this guy’s worth a punt.’
“What it did is it gave us the ability, and it might sound a bit cruel, but it gave us the ability to see a larger number and whittle them down. But ultimately, sport is a meritocracy and you need to be delivering and taking advantage of all the opportunities you get both in the car and out of the car to develop yourself.
“What really pleases me is when Taylor was on the JWRC pre-event conference here, a question was something about getting provided a car and he said, ‘Well, there’s much more to it than that.’
“So if we’re producing drivers that are not just like, ‘Well, give me the best car and I’ll win’, we’re producing drivers that are actually saying, ‘Well, I need to better myself and I now have a development pathway of what I need to do’, I think that’s incredibly positive.”
Max Smart looks to be competing for his place in the program with Jose Caparó
Reid’s whittling down process had already reduced Rally Star’s group of five continental final winners and the women’s final winner down to four after last year’s ‘training season’. It was envisaged that three would continue in JWRC for a second year, but with Jürgenson’s graduation, that will now be two.
Roussel admits Gill is effectively a shoo-in, leaving one place up for grabs for either Smart or Caparó. But who gets the nod is not solely down to their rally results.
“No, no, it would be after debating,” he told DirtFish just before Jürgenson beat Gill to the JWRC title. “So we could even decide to keep in Junior José and Max, and not [Gill]. It shouldn’t be the case, but it’s never written anywhere that we take the points and we select based on the points.
“The assessment is much deeper than this. It’s 99% certain that the one not winning the championship [Gill] will continue in Junior and one of the two others will continue. No decision has been taken yet.”
A grueling Acropolis took its toll on the Fiesta Rally3 cars, as expected, with Caparó actually placing highest of the three Rally Star drivers awaiting their fate.
But whoever is selected to remain on the scheme next year, the progress made by all four drivers is proof of the Rally Star program’s worth. But can it achieve Roussel’s ultimate goal of a graduate becoming a fully paid-up Rally1 driver? Time will tell.
