Evans had been previously named on the entry list of the season-opening Rally Monte Carlo, but his full-time status had yet to be confirmed.

He will return to the main class after a year in WRC2, where he finished third behind Toyota's Esapekka Lappi and Teemu Suninen.

While Sebastien Ogier and Ott Tanak form M-Sport's primary line-up, Evans will run in DMACK's entry, which is run in partnership with the Cumbrian team and will be nominated to score manufacturers' points in Monte Carlo.

Alongside his WRC2 commitments, Evans won last year's British Rally Championship with the Chinese tyre company's support.

"I never doubted this is what I wanted to do, but when I was on the outside looking in last year, it really hammered it home just how much I did want this," Evans told Motorsport.com's sister publication Autosport.

"It would have been easy to spit the dummy out and say: 'No, I don’t want to do that [drive the WRC2 car],' but if I’d done that, the result would probably have been that I probably wouldn't have driven a car again.

"I had to grit my teeth and get on with it. It’s fair to say the last year has toughened me up a bit and taught me plenty, it’s been a life experience as much as anything else.

"I knew you could never take anything for granted in motorsport, but I know more than ever that nobody’s guaranteed their seat.

"When you’ve been through this kind of thing, you do come back with a different perspective and you come back stronger."

Alongside Ogier, Tanak and Evans, Mads Ostberg and Martin Prokop will also form a two-car privateer team with M-Sport Fords, and Suninen is also expected to drive the WRC car in selected rallies later in the year.

Lorenzo Bertelli will also contest Rally Sweden in a 2017-spec Fiesta with M-Sport backing, as per regulations that only allow factory teams to compete with this year's new breed of cars.

Additional reporting by David Evans