Gronholm to Drive for Stobart in Rally Sweden

After a few years in which we heard little about former World Rally champion Marcus Gronholm, it has now surfaced in the media that the Finnish driver was included in Stobart VK M-Sport’s list for manufacturer points for the upcoming Rally Sweden.

The fact that Gronholm wanted to return to WRC action in a Ford Focus WRC was no news to anyone, especially since the former rally champion announced in December that he plans to get behind the wheel of Mattias Therman's Team Therminator-prepared Focus – Finnish privateer – during the Swedish round.

However, as announced by Stobart team, it seems Gronholm’s participation in the aforementioned event will happen under Ford’s satellite team’s banner, alongside Henning Solberg and Matthew Wilson.

The team did not issue any statements regarding Gronholm’s future programme with the team (if any). However, as the situation presents itself at the moment, there will be no less than 6 Ford Focus WRCs eligible for scoring manufacturer points in Sweden, as Ford’s works team will field cars for Mikko Hirvonen, Jari-Matti Latvala and Khalid Al-Qassimi.

Since his retirement from the series at the end of 2007, Gronholm competed in only one WRC event. It happened last year, when he was offered a Prodrive-prepared Subaru Impreza WRC2008 to drive in Rally Portugal. He eventually damaged his car during Day 2 of the rally, despite staying in touch with the leaders until that point (he ran as high as 4th place).