M-Sport has high hopes for Mikkelsen

Andreas Mikkelsen’s M-Sport team is confident that its young star can replicate the pace he showed on Rally d’Italia-Sardegna last month when he resumes his Intercontinental Rally Challenge campaign on Sata Rallye Açores this week.

The gravel rally will mark the 21-year-old’s third appearance of the season at the wheel of his Hankook-shod M-Sport Ford Fiesta S2000. He starts the event on a high after scoring his first IRC points on the Geko Ypres Rally last month.

Although the Norwegian’s outing in Sardinia was blighted by an opening-stage crash, he recorded a succession of top five times when he restarted under SupeRally regulations on day two. Despite not undertaking a pre-event test and having never competed in the Azores before, an M-Sport representative said the British team had high hopes for Mikkelsen.

“Andreas showed a lot of pace in Sardinia so was clearly happy with the set-up of the car on gravel,” said the M-Sport official. “He’ll use tomorrow’s shakedown to get more time in the car but we’re confident he’ll do okay.”

Mikkelsen and co-driver Ola Fløene are currently completing the second day of reconnaissance for the Ponta Delgada-based rally. The cloudy conditions experienced on Tuesday have been replaced by warm weather and bright sunshine.