Estonian driver Romet Jürgenson is M-Sport’s latest promising talent, expected at some stage to rise to the top tier of the World Rally Championship.
The Junior WRC champion has competed this season in the WRC2 category, achieving his best results so far with fifth places in Rally Sardinia and his home event in Estonia.
M-Sport boss Malcolm Wilson recognised Jürgenson’s talent early on while serving on the judging panel of the FIA Rally Star programme, where Jürgenson was selected as one of the winners.
And when the big boss rates you highly, you always stand a good chance of getting your opportunity sooner or later.
“Malcolm is a huge believer in Romet,” said M-Sport team principal Richard Millener to DirtFish.
“It was really exciting to see his pace on such inexperience, especially on Tarmac in Wales,” Millener added.
Millener was referring to the European Rally Championship round held in early September in Wales, where Jürgenson finished an impressive second.
Over the years, M-Sport has sometimes moved its young talents forward too quickly. Ott Tänak, Elfyn Evans and Adrien Fourmaux all made rapid ascents to the top class, but in each case the “promotion” came too soon, forcing all three to return to the WRC2 category to rebuild their confidence and form before reaching the sport’s pinnacle.
Now, M-Sport is determined not to repeat that same mistake with Jürgenson.
“You never say never with anyone, but personally for me right now, I would be very cautious about putting too much pressure on someone like that so quickly,” Millener said candidly.
“We’ve seen it, but we have done it before and had to bring people back [to Rally2] again. And they learned some good lessons in that point,” Millener continued.
Finances also always play a major role in M-Sport’s driver choices. As a private team, its business model largely depends on selling customer cars. Just as Toyota uses Oliver Solberg as a marketing tool in the WRC2 category, Ford naturally also wants to keep talented drivers active outside the top class.
“From a business perspective, Rally2 is so important for M-Sport and the more it wins, the better it is for the business that helps run this team,” said Millener.
“We saw it with Adrien when he had a good run of events, we had good reaction from customers on cars and so we want to continue that. Again, there’s a balance there, but you don’t want to stunt or pull back Romet’s progression. But I still think it’s very early in his career,” Millener concluded.
