Former World Champion squad Prodrive
have no plans to go away just yet, even though they will be absent
from Rallye Monte Carlo.
The firm that prepared Subaru's cars
from 1990 until 2008 were dropped as MINI's preparation team last
season after having been unable to find a title sponsor for the MINI
WRC Team, who later withdrew from works competition altogether.
Prodrive had been trying to get to the
season-opener in Monte Carlo but the funds for the event weren't
available, so the decision was made to move their season début to
Rally Sweden, Round 2 of the 2013 WRC season. However, Prodrive's
Richard Taylor hasn't totally confirmed they will be in Sweden,
stating they're “reasonably optimistic” that they will be there.
“We’re reasonably optimistic we’ll
get to Sweden and we’re positive the car will be capable of setting
good times. When a car works well on Tarmac generally you’ll find
it works well everywhere, particularly given the upgrades we’ve
made that have addressed some of the issues we had in Sweden last
year.” he said.
Like last season, the team is only
looking at contesting a limited programme, possibly with just a
single car, in 2013. This is unless a substantial backer, or backers,
found, this will be the case for the team. Even with this is mind,
Taylor is sure that the car is still a rally winner. In it's début
year it proved so, with Dani Sordo fighting for wins on tarmac and
Kris Meeke setting rapid stage times on gravel.
“Whatever we do has to stack up
commercially. There’s no financial support from MINI but some of
the drivers we are talking to have their own funding and we are also
in discussion with commercial partners to do a reasonable number of
rallies with a car capable of winning.” he added.
For 2013, Sordo has returned to Citroen
with the possibility of a full compliment of rallies in 2013 ahead of
him, and there is no word of Kris Meeke's return to the WRC.
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