Motorsport: Toyota no closer to revealing 2017 drivers

The Toyota Motor Corp. Yaris WRC racing vehicle. Photo / Getty Images

Toyota is no closer to announcing a driver line-up for their return to the World Rally Championship in 2017.

There was speculation at Rally Mexico a couple of weeks ago about who would be driving the Yaris WRC next season with former Hyundai works driver Juho Hanninen completing the recce.

The Finn is likely to perform the same task at each round of this year's championship and remains a strong possibility of lining up in the team next year.

"We will see," Toyota program chief Makinen told racer.com. "It's one of the possibilities.

"The reason he does the recce is to help us prepare the test programme and to help us find identical conditions for the testing this year. It's really helping us training for next year.

"It's not yet the time to talk about drivers really. We will be looking at all different kinds of possibilities, but it's too early right now. It's more reasonable to talk about this in the autumn."

Makinen is keen on luring former world champions Sebastien Loeb and Petter Solberg out of retirement.