The team thriving despite losing its champion

When Sebastien Ogier walked out of Dovenby Hall for the final time last December, he closed the door behind him and ended an era. Once again, winning in the World Rally Championship was to be a thing of the past for M-Sport. Or so the story went.

Ogier and Julien Ingrassia's final farewell to Cumbria had had an element of the funereal about it. Or so the story went.

But both stories were wrong. The atmosphere was all about celebration and determination.

When Jari-Matti Latvala, Petter Solberg and Ford departed at the end of 2012, Malcolm Wilson's team was forced onto the back foot, which meant drivers paying for the privilege to climb aboard a factory Fiesta or investing in youth. Either way, the four winless years that followed weren't exactly unsurprising.

Going back even further, when Ford scaled back its WRC investment in 2005 and all budget was directed towards a revolutionary new Ford Focus RS WRC 06, Toni Gardemeister and Roman Kresta shouldered the Cumbrian effort. Wins weren't expected, and didn't come. On paper, results from the first four rounds of this year tell a similar story.

But this is now a different M-Sport Ford squad from the one that looked over the fence into the winners' enclosure for too many years.

Shortly before Ogier's arrival in 2017, confidence and self-belief in the team was in short supply. There had been flashes: Elfyn Evans' second place in Corsica in '15 and either of Ott Tanak's near misses in Poland were good examples of wins that got away. But the very fact they got away seemed to further deplete conviction within the squad.

Wilson knew this better than anybody. For him, the frustration was multiplied by the fact that his car had the speed to win. But the key to unlocking that potential and reminding M-Sport what winning was all about didn't come cheap. And Ogier's multi-million-pound invoice was emailed in Wilson's direction.

Credit to Wilson, he took a punt on Ogier for a year and kept him for two, before he had to admit that the economics made no sense. Three from four championships, six rally wins and 15 podiums was a more than solid sporting return on that investment, but titles don't pay bills.

Which is how this story started with a goodbye and an atmosphere of resolve and fortitude.

Wilson's decision to move Millener to head up the team was a sensible one

It sounds trite to talk about professionals and world champions in such a way, but getting the mood right at the end of last season was key to this year.

"I always said we would keep pushing ahead with development," says Wilson. "I was adamant I didn't want there to be any dip in the car's performance. We simply couldn't let that to happen. There's no doubting we were going to miss Seb and Julien, but we had to look to the future and that was Elfyn [Evans] and Teemu [Suninen]."

So, that's a future based around unproven drivers who, according to some, had already been supping in last-chance saloon for too long.

To make matters worse, sales of the world's favourite R5 car - the Fiesta (of which 300 examples have now been sold) - had bottomed out. While at the same time, sales of World Rally cars never got going courtesy of regulations precluding the use of them in domestic series (rules which are now changing).

The perfect storm, it seemed, hit Dovenby in December, and few outside their Cumbria base shared the hope and vision the new year brought.

There were signs of pace from new team leader Evans in Monte Carlo, but then he crashed. Suninen was already off the road by this point. Both drivers showed speed in Sweden - they set fastest times and Suninen led before burying his Fiesta in a snowbank. In Mexico, things were looking even better and, although Suninen crashed again, Evans went into the final day fighting with Ott Tanak for second. Granted, he ended up third, but the Brit turned in a performance of true grit.

Then came Corsica - one of the season's most demanding of driver, machine and team. Evans led for eight of 14 stages and was only robbed of victory by a last-stage puncture. So, what gives?

"It's a state of mind thing," says team principal Rich Millener, who was promoted for the start of this season. "It's about stopping the guys in the team thinking we've been forgotten. Because we haven't.

"We keep hearing about the other teams coming with their mega upgrades and their grand plans about how everything's going to be great, but we're still there by doing what we do. We don't have the budget for the huge investment in [the] development parts, we have to be sensible with the development structure we've got for the car - we simply can't afford to get it wrong."

Wilson's decision to move Millener to head up the team was a sensible one. In more than a decade with M-Sport, Millener has worked in every department and has come from the factory floor to lead the team. He's absolutely in touch with what makes every part of the team tick.

"I'm not about Jose Mourinho-type pep talks or anything like that," he says, "but I've been able to show the boys how we're going to make the budget cuts and how we can make them hurt less. It's about keeping them informed with everything, showing them how we're making the improvements and making sure everybody stays totally involved and engaged with the programme."

Millener has overseen an overhaul of M-Sport's side of the service park, introducing inflatable structures for the car bays and outsourcing catering and hospitality.

The upshot of those two moves will save weeks' worth of set-up and strip-down time on location, not to mention needing to bring - and fuel - two fewer trucks to each European event.

In terms of hardware, the addition of Sachs dampers for gravel and asphalt running is the only significant set-up change to the Fiesta WRC for this season, having been present at Ogier's behest on the loose surfaces from Finland onwards last year.

"This team knows how to win rallies and championships and we're not about to forget that this season" Rich Millener

Ford Performance is devoting greater resource, with M-Sport's head of rally engineering Chris Williams quite clear that the aerodynamic advances made with the car in the second half of last season would not have been possible without the use of the Blue Oval's wind tunnel facility in Charlotte.

So what is the biggest difference? One word: Evans.

"If we hadn't got Seb a couple of years ago, Malcolm was ready to bring Elfyn to lead the team," says Millener. "[But] that was probably a bit too early for him.

"Instead, Elfyn's had two years alongside Seb. He's learned from him in the same way [Ott] Tanak did. In many ways, Elfyn was ready [for Ogier to leave]. We had to sacrifice him at times for Seb's championship last year and he saw all the effort we were putting into Seb's car - but that made sense: he was the one with the shot at the title."

Now, in 2019, it's Evans' turn.

"In Corsica, Elfyn saw the commitment this team is ready to put behind him," says Millener. "When he lost 16 seconds to [Thierry] Neuville on the last stage on Saturday, we talked about it and we kept our heads up when Elfyn came into service. It would have been easy to cry about it, but we didn't. There was no moaning, no looking back. We turned it around.

"We changed everything, absolutely everything, on the car. It had new brakes, dampers - the lot - and we worked so hard on the weight. That's something we learned from Ogier - if he was in a fight on Saturday night, he would be on our backs all the time about having the car perfect for Sunday.

"Without [him] even asking, we did exactly the same for Elfyn and it was so important for him to see that, whatever we did for Seb last year, we're prepared to do for him this year. And when he went out and took 16s out of Neuville on the first stage the next morning. We nearly put a hole in the office wall we were so excited.

"You saw the reaction, Neuville was gobsmacked. Everybody was.

"We have to change the [other drivers'] perception of: 'Oh Elfyn's there, he could be quite good, but it'll probably be OK'. Corsica showed them, it won't be OK. Elfyn's a different driver now. And, I have to say, Teemu's coming as well. The way he held Ott off on the final day in Corsica was superb. Tanak wanted that place, he was coming through, but Teemu didn't let him."

More than anything, Corsica showed that there's genuine substance to the fighting talk and post-Ogier era optimism.

"M-Sport's been in this championship for 22 years," says Millener. "That's a lot of experience that has given us a lot of success. This team knows how to win rallies and championships and we're not about to forget that this season."