Delecour inked in for Deutschland outing
Ford World Rally has decided to send Francois Delecour to the Rally Deutschland after all, allowing Colin McRae and Carlos Sainz to concentrate on the world title fight
The Frenchman has been linked to the July 6-8 event since Ford indicated that it would attend. But the team's hesitation in confirming him led to rumours that either McRae or Sainz might be called into action to boost the profile of the rally, which is a strong candidate for inclusion in next year's world championship.
But team boss Malcolm Wilson confirmed to Autosport.com this morning that McRae's recent upturn in fortunes convinced him to allow the Scot to complete his test for the Safari, which is scheduled for the same weekend.
"I wanted to wait and see what happened in Cyprus and Argentina," said Wilson, "and now that Colin's got a sniff of the title we want to allow him to concentrate on that. Carlos is in the same situation."
He added: "It's quite useful that Francois's doing it anyway. He's been working hard on the asphalt testing and hopefully we'll have a few new things to try out in Germany as we look towards Corsica and Sanremo later in the year. We're hoping that Pirelli might have some new tyres as well."
Wilson also confirmed that Delecour will tackle the Safari Rally. "We sorted that out yesterday," he said. "Ideally I'd like to see Francois on all of the rallies this year. That's what I'm aiming for."
Ford has yet to come up with a confirmed reason for Delecour's engine failure in Cyprus. It has been suggested that the motor might have suffered damage when the Focus slid along on its nose at a bad bump, although Ford sources say this is unlikely. But Cosworth engineers have not yet been able to conduct a full post-mortem on the engine, since it has been temporarily lost in transit from Cyprus.
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