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Ford to leave WRC at end of 2012 (14 posts)

Topic tags: ford, WRC

Viewing post 1 to 14 (14 total posts)

Keith Collantine said 7 months, 1 week ago:

More bad news for the WRC as Ford is pulling works support for its team. M-Sport intend to continue running Fiestas in next year’s season:

My intention is that we will continue to push to secure stage wins and overall results on the forthcoming events for Ford and to push forward with the development work that was started in March this year to improve and refine the Fiesta WRC even further, ready for the 2013 season.

http://www.m-sport.co.uk/index.php/news/1259-m-sport-press-release

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Fer no.65 said 7 months, 1 week ago:

Baaaaaaaaaaaah ! :( What have they done to rallying :(?

It’s so sad to see just 2 manufacturers racing each other. Now we’ll only have Citroen and Volkswagen. Not many stars on the drivers side either.

To think that 9 years ago, we had Burns, Makkinen, McRae, Groenholm, Loeb, Solberg, Sainz… Pug, Subaru, Ford, Citroen, Skoda, Hyundai, Mitsubishi…

FIA needs to concentrate on bringing back WRC :/.

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robk23 said 7 months, 1 week ago:

I’ve been expecting this may happen for a while although lately I thought Ford would stay with Hyundai now entering. Of course Citroen might leave at the end of next year to do the WTCC with Loeb so 2014 may just be Hyundai vs Volkswagen.

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Chalky said 7 months, 1 week ago:

Maybe it’s me, but World Rally really shouldn’t cost what it does to run.
That’s me assuming it’s a financial reason for the teams leaving and not an image thing (Unless we are winning we are not competing). WRC used to be a great spectacle.

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Prisoner Monkeys said 7 months, 1 week ago:

It’s a shame, but I’m not surprised. Ford are notoriously non-committal when it cons to providing works support. Here in Australia, they tend to wait until the last minute, and even then, they only pledge the bare minimum.

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AndrewTanner said 7 months, 1 week ago:

No way :( That’s pretty awful news.

What is happening to this sport?!

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Prisoner Monkeys said 7 months, 1 week ago:

What is happening to this sport?!

Nobody can compete with Citroen. And nobody wants to be able to spend the money to be able to compete with them, because there is no guarantee that they will succeed.

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ajokay said 7 months, 1 week ago:

What with no-one having any money any more, does motorsport just need to drop back to being a sport full of private racing teams doing everything on a shoestring, simply for the love of racing?

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MazdaChris said 7 months, 1 week ago:

There’s a pretty spot-on article on Autosport (subs only) about this, basically saying it’s a monumental mistake for Ford to pull out right now. The Fiesta WRC looks like being the class of the field, and Loeb has effectively said he won’t be contesting the title next year. These two facts mean that next year will be the best chance for Ford in probably over a decade to secure both championships. And they’re pulling a plug with a great little race car in the garage. Smacks of Honda pulling out of F1 at the end of 2008 doesn’t it..

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Fer no.65 said 7 months, 1 week ago:

Yeah, they should’ve stayed one more year and see what’d happen without Loeb…

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Matthew said 7 months, 1 week ago:

Can anybody tell me the last time Ford wasn’t in the WRC as a manufacturer?

I know a lot has been said about M-Sport running the Ford team as the factory outfit since ’97 but Ford were in it before then as Ford right?

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robk23 said 7 months, 1 week ago:

Latvala is at Volkswagen for 2013, I wonder how long those talks have been going on for? Surely not since Monday?

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AndrewTanner said 7 months ago:

@mazdachris It does seem like a silly decision when you look at it like that but I guess the big wigs at Ford would have decided this quite a while ago before they knew of Loeb’s situation. I would expect that their various resources and cash will have been allocated to something else by now.

Very sad, but at least the WRC is getting all its bad news in one season! 2013 could be fantastic if everything works into position.

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Prisoner Monkeys said 5 months, 1 week ago:

Speaking of Ford (there’s no other place for this that I can see), Thierry Neuville and Evgeny Novikov have joined Qatar M-Sport alongside Mads Ostberg and Nasser al’Attiyah (Juho Hanninen will compete at selected events).

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