“When I first said I wanted to set my team up in Cumbria, they thought I was mad,” admits Malcolm Wilson, in his sumptuous oak-panelled meeting room at the elegant Dovenby Hall – which, appropriately enough, was once used as a mental hospital. But M-Sport has never exactly followed the crowd.
From a small family business to a cornerstone of world rallying, Wilson’s team has built cars that have defined eras and carried legends to titles: most recently with Sebastien Ogier (still now, the Frenchman describes M-Sport as his ‘favourite team’).
But as brand new WRC regulations loom for 2027, the future of M-Sport and its role in Ford’s wider motorsport strategy has rarely seemed more intriguing, or more uncertain.
Those new technical rules are intended to reframe the championship, opening it up to more manufacturers, rebalancing costs and potentially rewriting the rules of engagement. For Malcolm Wilson, who has spent almost half a century living and breathing rallying, this represents both a crossroads and a lifeline.
“From a rally point of view, we’re probably in the most difficult position we’ve ever been in,” he admits. “We don’t yet know exactly what we’ll be doing in 2026 related to WRC, but rally’s been my life and we certainly want to try and find a way to stay in it.”
That balance – between loyalty to the sport and the need to adapt to the realities of modern automotive politics – will define M-Sport’s next move.
Ford’s strategic focus has moved decisively towards off-road and endurance programmes, particularly the Raptor Dakar project and the Mustang GT3, not to mention Formula 1.
“Ford have had to change direction,” points out Malcolm. “They’re looking primarily at cross-country. We’re really grateful for that – we’ve got a great programme with Ford for Dakar – but WRC at the moment is off the radar.”
It’s unclear if he’s talking about WRC as a whole or Ford specifically. But if there’s no M-Sport at the top table of world rallying next year, it would mark the end of an unbroken era stretching back to 1997: nearly three decades of continuous participation.
Chances are though they’ll be on the start ramp in Monte Carlo next year. M-Sport has been here before, more than once.
When Ford withdrew manufacturer support after the 2012 season, M-Sport didn’t just fold up its tents and disappear.
Instead, it reinvented itself, producing competitive customer cars, running semi-works programmes, and keeping the flame alive.
This constant reactivity explains Matthew Wilson – Malcolm’s son, another former driver, and the heir to the empire – is one of the company’s defining traits.
“We can adapt quite well,” he points out. “That’s a key strength of what we can do here.” Maybe it’s those hardy Cumbrian genes…
Nowhere is that flexibility more evident than in the variety of programmes currently under the M-Sport umbrella.
The Dakar programme has taken on a whole new momentum of its own, tapping into Ford’s ambition to become, as CEO Jim Farley put it, “the Porsche of off-road.”
The Raptor T1+ project embodies that ambition, combining brutal engineering with real-world durability.
M-Sport’s first Dakar outing with the Raptor this year produced a podium thanks to Mattias Ekstrom, and Malcolm Wilson knows all the foundations are there to challenge for victory.
“We haven’t won Dakar yet,” he says, “but we’ve learned a lot, and we’ve got a great car. That’s definitely on our list.”
Dakar’s growing prestige has changed the context about what top-level motorsport means for manufacturers, and Ford specifically.
“It’s a far more user-friendly environment for privateers,” Malcolm explains. “You can leave the bivouac in the morning, come back in the afternoon, and you might be sitting next to Carlos Sainz having tea. It’s accessible, it’s social, and you still have a chance to make an impression.”
Matthew echoes the point that cross country is now what WRC used to be. “You look at cross-country now, it’s growing fast. There were 36 top-end T1+ cars in Portugal recently. In WRC, you’re lucky to have ten Rally 1 cars.”
The conclusion is uncomfortably inevitable: rally raid is booming just as the WRC finds itself in an identity crisis.
The shift in global car manufacturing has been equally disruptive. As smaller cars disappear from production and electric power comes in, the now-traditional rally platforms vanish with them.
The Ford Fiesta is gone. Even the Skoda Fabia, once threatened with extinction, has been given only a temporary reprieve. By contrast, the fastest-growing sector in the global automotive market is SUVs.
For M-Sport, this poses existential questions about the kinds of vehicles it can base its future around.
The 2027 WRC regulations – introducing spaceframe cars that can wear any manufacturer’s bodywork – may offer a solution.
“The great thing with the new regs,” Malcolm says, “is it gives us scope. We can basically put anybody’s body onto the chassis structure.”
You see where he’s going with this? That flexibility is designed to attract new entrants or privateer teams, something Malcolm now champions in his new role with the FIA as deputy president for sport.
It couldn’t come at a more critical time, with rallying seeking a new promoter following its technological rebirth.
“My priority is to get rally back to where I believe it can be,” he says. “The biggest thing we can do for the new promoter is to help them get more manufacturers. Once you’ve got that, everything else follows.”
Yet Ford’s shift away from WRC doesn’t mean M-Sport is being left out in the cold. There is a growing exchange of information between M-Sport, Ford Performance in the US, and Red Bull Powertrains – part of the new Ford-Red Bull Formula 1 alliance.
“There’s definitely a triangle of passage of information between all three,” says Malcolm. “It’s evolving and growing every day.”
While F1 may not directly influence M-Sport’s rally or Dakar programmes, the technological symbiosis within Ford’s global motorsport network could eventually pay dividends. In a world increasingly shaped by hybridisation and electrification, technical know-how is a form of currency, and M-Sport is still trading heavily in combustion expertise.
“Our busiest department right now is internal combustion engines,” adds Malcolm. “What used to be our fabrication and body shop is now all engine production.”
That diversification and expansion, as well as a willingness to go against the grain, has been key to M-Sport’s survival.
The company is no longer ‘just’ a rally team: it is a true manufacturing and engineering hub that designs and builds engines for external clients, from BTCC to GT3.
Step into M-Sport now and you wouldn’t recognise the place compared to just a few years ago, such has been the pace of investment and rebuilding. A lot of that work is now focussed on racing as much as rallying.
The Mustang GT3 project, a partnership with Multimatic and Ford Performance, sits comfortably within M-Sport’s growing portfolio of race engine supply contracts.
For Matthew, who started off his competitive career as a race driver, M-Sport’s next frontier is definitely a return to top-level circuit racing.
“We’ve definitely got unfinished business there,” he says. “When Bentley pulled out, we were within a whisker of winning the Spa 24 Hours. And now, with GT3 going to Le Mans, it’s a great time to be back in that environment.”
Much of this renewed focus has been enabled by monumental investment in facilities.
The Dovenby Hall base is no longer just a workshop. It’s a motorsport campus, crowned by the new test track: a circuit Malcolm had dreamed of since visiting Ferrari’s Fiorano test track in the early 1990s.
“That’s where the entire vision came from,” he recalls. “Even before we had the Ford contract, I wanted a UK equivalent of Fiorano.”
It took five years to obtain planning permission, but today that vision is reality: a private, multi-surface facility that allows complete vehicle testing behind closed doors.
“It’s probably the last test track that will ever be built in the UK,” Malcolm says. “And we’ve got it right here.”
The timing was almost disastrous. Covid hit when the building was 75 per cent finished, and within weeks both Bentley and Jaguar (for which M-Sport built the iPace one-make series that supported Formula E) cancelled their programmes.
“That was a hammer blow,” Malcolm remembers, visibly discomforted. “Two of our major projects stopped overnight.”
Yet even that setback proved temporary. The track is now fully operational, used for testing everything from rally cars to GT3 prototypes.
“The whole facility’s actually more geared to racing than rally now,” Malcolm admits. “You can take a car straight from the workshop to the circuit.”
This exclusive combination of experience, independence, and infrastructure makes M-Sport unlike any other motorsport company in Britain.
It’s a long way from ‘Motorsport Valley’, inhabited by the Prodrives of this world, yet it offers a complete, self-contained ecosystem for car design, build, and testing.
“We’ve always wanted to be a one-stop shop for a manufacturer,” says Malcolm. “Now, we can do everything on site. You don’t need to go off-site for testing.”
That self-sufficiency is crucial as M-Sport positions itself for the next era. The FIA’s new Rally 1 concept allows non-manufacturer teams – tuners, in effect – to build their own top-level cars using common architectures.
Rich Millener, M-Sport’s team principal, sees this as an enormous opportunity. “A rule change gives the biggest option,” he says. “The new regulations open massive commercial possibilities. Why do we need OEMs? Look at Formula 1: you’ve got teams like Haas that are machinery constructors. It could be the same in rally.”
Millener goes further, suggesting that non-automotive brands could take the place of traditional manufacturers. “Why can’t we have a JCB World Rally Team?” he asks, which is one of his favourite hypothetical examples.
“It fits perfectly: tough, off-road, construction. It’s real, it’s accessible, it’s about strong engineering. That’s what rallying is.”
It’s a radical vision, but one that reflects the wider fragmentation of the automotive world. If we had TAG Heuer badging engines in Formula 1, why not diggers branding cars in rallying?
As the lines between road car production, motorsport, and branding blur, the old model of the works manufacturer may give way to new hybrids of engineering and commercial partnerships.
And if anyone knows how to make such an arrangement work, it’s M-Sport. The message is clear: with Ford’s WRC commitment fading, the most likely outcome is M-Sport making its own car for the new rules in 2027. In fact, they’re probably working on that already. But before then, there’s this season and the next one to get through.
The current WRC season has been a test of endurance for M-Sport. With limited funding and a youthful driver line-up, expectations were necessarily modest. “We had to be realistic,” says Millener.
“We lost Adrian [Formaux] to Hyundai and we knew podiums would be tricky this year. The goal was to win stages, have strong days, and keep developing Greg [Munster] and Josh [McErlean].”
In truth, both drivers have won stages and impressed under pressure, but especially McErlean, who surprised many with his pace in Sweden – only his second event in a Rally 1 car.
Still, the frustrations are obvious. The team is currently last of the Rally 1 outfits, with the drivers rarely breaking into the top five overall. This from a team that has previously won titles with names likes McRae, Sainz, and Ogier.
“It kills me every rally we go to that we’re in this position,” admits Millener. “We’ve got a winning car, but not the budget or the drivers to show it. The team goes to win.
“We don’t cut corners. And I know if we had a top driver in there, it would just lift everyone.”
He’s probably thinking back to his first rally as team principal, in Monte-Carlo 2022, when Sebastien Loeb gave the Puma a win on its debut – sealing the victory on the final stage.
That feels a long time ago now, although the Puma also won in 2023 with Ott Tanak. The last championship triumph was in 2018 (courtesy of Ogier). “It will come again,” Millener says, “but it takes some character building along the way.”
Character, of course, is what M-Sport has in abundance. Its history is defined by resilience – from Brexit to Covid, from the end of the Focus and Fiesta eras to the new world of Raptors and Mustangs and BTCC race engines.
“We’ve never had to go and look for work,” Malcolm says. “Bentley just happened with a phone call. Jaguar came through a tender. But the world’s changed, and we probably need to market ourselves more than before. We’ve always let our results do the talking but at the same time, you need to keep on reinventing yourself.”
That humility, paired with quiet experience, is part of what makes M-Sport special. It remains a family business, and that family dynamic continues to shape its culture, as Malcolm steps increasingly back towards retirement and Matthew takes over.
At least that’s what was meant to happen. But then Robert Reid left his role as deputy president for sport in the FIA, and Malcolm was essentially made an offer he couldn’t refuse – with a long shared history in rallying between himself and FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem (who won eight of his 14 Middle East titles in a Ford). Anyone who knows Ben Sulayem will realise that he can be extremely persuasive.
So just at a time when the 69-year-old Malcolm Wilson was meant to be dialling down his sporting responsibilities, the volume has suddenly been turned to maximum, but Matthew was always ready to take over the mantle anyway.
It’s perhaps just happening slightly sooner than anticipated. And father and son have learned to get the most out of each other as their relationship reframes.
“There’s no negative to working together from my point of view,” says Matthew. “When I was driving, the pressure was huge, but since I’ve been involved in the business, it’s just respect for what Dad’s created. We probably have slightly different strengths, and I think that works well.”
Malcolm smiles at that. “I’ll keep the pressure on him,” he says – only half in jest. But it seems that both Wilsons have found their niche, as M-Sport moves into its next chapter.
Pressure of course has never been in short supply at Dovenby Hall, but neither has ambition.
The new museum on site celebrates the company’s extraordinary journey, from Malcolm’s first Escort Mk1 to oddities such as Bill Ford’s customised Escort road car and the rare 1700T turbo, not to mention an RS200.
It’s not just about Ford either: you’ll also find the Bentley Continental GT3 that won the Bathurst 12 Hours.
The future will of course look different. Dakar is ascendant, circuit racing is back on the agenda, and rallying is set for reinvention under a new regulatory and promotional structure.
“It’s an interim period,” says Millener of 2026. “A holding year, really, before 2027. But it’s important to stay in it. You take a year out and you lose your edge.”
And that’s why it’s unlikely M-Sport is going anywhere next year, although in all likelihood it will be more of the same, marking time. But survival is everything. And the Cumbrians are born survivors.
For M-Sport, staying in it – whatever “it” becomes – is second nature. The next decade is set to evolve the company beyond its rallying roots into a broader, more versatile engineering powerhouse, blending competition, commercial development, and heritage in equal measure. Perhaps even a fully-fledged manufacturer in its own right.
As Malcolm Wilson says: “We’ve ticked every box any manufacturer needs. We’ve got the facility, the people, the track, the experience. We just need the next opportunity.”
It’s tempting to think of M-Sport as an outlier, tucked away in rustic isolation, and in many ways it is.
But perhaps that distance is exactly what allows it to see the road ahead more clearly and offer something that other people can’t. In a world of shifting priorities and uncertain futures, the team from near Cockermouth still believes in the same thing it always has: building cars that win – and finding new ways to do it when the rules change.
In the words of Cockermouth’s most famous resident, William Wordsworth: “Habit rules the unreflecting herd.”
And there’s certainly never been a herd mentality at M-Sport.
Driving Britain’s Fiorano
There’s more than 13 metres of elevation going up and down, a long 800-metre straight that’s perfect for GT cars, the barriers seem to close in on you, and the rain is coming down so hard that the wipers genuinely struggle to keep up.
But it’s not the Spa 24 Hours. Instead, it’s M-Sport’s answer to Fiorano, in the middle of Storm Amy.
The idea was to make this track – built on the site of a former cricket pitch – as adaptable as possible, with many different layouts within the full outside loop. In total there are 18 possible configurations, designed to test every aspect of a car’s performance.
Quite deliberately, the track feels like a bit of everything, with the idea being to build in plenty of character: there’s lots of camber and a mixture of fast and slow sections. What you don’t see is all the different sensors and data loggers that are built into the track, with the aim of recouping as much data as a car can provide via 13 telemetry points.
Having an onsite test track within a holistic facility is designed to optimise every process: a car can in theory be tested in the morning, analysed in real time, with new parts machined at lunchtime and then validated in the afternoon, shaving days and weeks off lead times. The end result is a faster car that’s created more quickly.
Not only that, but M-Sport no longer needs to travel to shake down its cars as well as carry out specific testing: particularly for superspecial and asphalt stages.
There’s a steady state loop of asphalt – a constant radius with different grip levels – that’s mainly used for jobs such as oil and fuel surge testing.
The investment was monumental, and both Wilsons will admit that there’s no way it could be justified merely to test and validate their own cars – as Ferrari does. Instead, with the way that the place is laid out next to the museum, the idea is to create a proper experience centre, which can be hired out to brands and organisations for special events or launches.
It’s also the ideal venue for a manufacturer to come and do some secret testing: which is when the remote location comes into its own. There’s apparently been quite a lot of that happening already, but unsurprisingly, nobody is talking about it…
The whole complex is self-contained, meaning that no visitors get to see what else is happening elsewhere within the facility and client confidentiality is maintained,
Instead, the public focus has been on conferences and events, with plenty of spectacular road routes around Dovenby Hall adding to the appeal of it as a launch venue: meaning that both track and road testing can be carried out within a compact area.
You can even have lunch in the sumptuous Ogier Suite that overlooks the circuit.
“We’re starting to get more and more corporate bookings of that sort,” points out Matthew Wilson. “We’ve also had some motorsport teams doing shakedowns and stuff like that. So it’s definitely growing and I think people are now starting to understand what’s actually here in this small part of Cumbria.”
And this remarkable 2.5-kilometre circuit is the surest sign yet of M-Sport’s future intentions.
- Text and images courtesy of Race Tech magazine – www.racetechmag.com
