FIA’s VW Decision a “Punch in the Face,” Says Mikkelsen

Last year’s World Rally Championship runner up and former VW driver, Andreas Mikkelsen is having a pretty rotten 2017. The young Norwegian has had two VW seats fall out from beneath him, and now he hasn’t got a ride for 2017.

“Basically everything that could have gone wrong went wrong and the latest decision [to bar the 2017 VW] was another punch in the face,” Mikkelsen told motorsport.com. “I don’t know what more I could have done to get a drive this year.”

Mikkelsen was ready to race VW’s nearly completed 2017 WRC Polo, when the FIA blocked homologation of the car, meaning that it couldn’t race this year.

As a result of his commitment to VW, Mikkelsen didn’t sign with another team, unlike his former teammates, Sebastien Ogier and Jari-Matti Latvala, who are racing with M-Sport and Toyota respectively.

Mikkelsen could compete in an older car, he says, but there’s little in doing that as it would be jolly expensive and as last season’s runner up, he doesn’t feel he has anything to prove.

So the young Norwegian says he’ll watch from the sidelines this season, biding his time until he can come back in 2018.

“I have chance to look at what everybody has got and we can make a picture about where is the best place to be in 2018 when I want to come back and fight for the world championship,” says Mikkelsen.

[source: motorsport.com]

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