M-Sport has faith in Bottas, performance to depend on conditions

Bottas will contest the January 24-26 event in an M-Sport Ford Fiesta World Rally Car and will test for two days close to the rally's Rovaniemi base in Finland.

M-Sport's deputy team principal Rich Millener said Bottas has the chance to impress if perfect winter conditions prevail in the Arctic Circle.

"Consistent conditions would really help," said Millener.

"Ideally there will be a lot of snow, big snowbanks and lots of good, hard ice on the road.

"If he gets those conditions, he'll find the grip's at a really high level and he'll learn quickly.

"If it's a bit warmer and he starts to lose some studs from the tyres because there's gravel coming through the ice, then it could be tough."

Bottas will be co-driven by Timo Rautiainen, who navigated Marcus Gronholm to the 2000 and '02 WRC crowns.

Millener said it would be easy for Bottas to be tripped up by having to work with a co-driver.

"What will be tough for him, and we've seen this with the likes of [F1 drivers Kimi] Raikkonen and Robert [Kubica], is learning pacenotes," added Millener.

"But he's got Timo there to help him, he should be fine.

"He's a very, very capable driver - we can see that from what he does in a Formula 1 car and some of those skills will transfer over.

"He's not going to be afraid of the speed and he doesn't need to learn how to drive a car."

Bottas will follow in the footsteps of Finnish F1 drivers including Keke Rosberg, Mika Hakkinen and Kimi Raikkonen in tackling the Arctic Lapland Rally.