There have been rumours, and in my recent post “Who drives what in WRC 2009?” i predicted it, but reading the Rally Ireland 2009 entrylist it’s now confirmed: Urmo Aava from Estonia will drive a Ford Focus WRC for the Stobart team in 2009. He is also confirmed to be driving Norway, Portugal, Italy, Poland, Finland, Spain and GB in the team.
What’s quite interesting is that Henning Solberg, who announced a his deal with the Ford boss Malcolm Wilson just a few days ago, is not nominated as a points scorer for Stobart in the rally. Instead, Matthew Wilson is nominated (as usual) and Aava. That’s strange, considering the fact that Henning presented his deal as a really good one including a lot of testing and highest priority in the Stobart team. The later is now very unlikely to be true, as I’m sure Wilson Sr (Malcolm, team boss) will put his focus on the drivers that scores points for the team. Of course, Henning will probably be nominated in rallies later – for sure in Norway – but it’s still not good for him to be set aside for a young driver as Aava.
Other things to note is that Khalid Al-Quassimi, as expected, drives a third works Ford and that Chris Atkinson has been nominated along with reigning junior champion Sebastien Ogier to score points for the Citroen team. That means that the Citroen bosses sets mediocre-driving-but-well-paying Conrad Rautenbach aside, which is probably a good decision for both the team and the sport.
