MRF will now wait until at least 2020 before making its full-season debut in WRC2, according to a report on motorsport.com
MRF dominated the Asia Pacific Rally Championship for several years, before it stepped up to WRC2 in 2018, undertaking a partial four-rally campaign with Gaurav Gill.
The programme was expected to act as precursor for a full-blown assault in WRC’s second-tier class in 2019.
The Indian manufacturer was also hopeful of being listed as an official tyre supplier for the WRC2 category.
“We have been in motorsport for 30 years now, in India, then in Asia Pacific and last year we did some rounds of the World Rally Championship," MRF managing director Arun Mammen told Motorsport.com.
“The WRC is a good learning experience for us and I think we need to do some more testing.
“We need more time for testing. We didn’t take part in all WRC rounds last year, we did four events, but the plan is to get more testing in 2019.
"Once we’ve done that, we should come back to the WRC next year [in 2020]. We want to take our time and make sure we have something solid in what we’re doing.
“We would like to enhance our experience in motorsport in Europe and get conventional passenger road car tyres into Europe as well. We are working on it now and the WRC would help us raise people’s awareness of MRF.
“Everybody is slowly hearing more and more about us, but we are working on getting that message across more quickly and to a wider audience.”
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