Ott Tanak remains adamant the fight for the FIA World Rally Championship drivers’ crown is far from a done deal despite needing to make up a 42-point deficit over the remaining six rounds of the season.
The action switches to the fast and free-flowing roads of Estonia this week and the M-Sport Ford man is keen to strike back in the title race with a much-needed and long overdue win with Martin Jarveoja. Their first – and only – victory of 2023 since making the switch to the Blue Oval came on February’s Rally Sweden.
Since then, Tanak has been pushing M-Sport and Ford Performance hard in an effort to keep pace with their rivals at Hyundai Motorsport and Toyota Gazoo Racing.
An extra ‘big effort’ has been put in prior to Estonia, however, with this comprising the usual pre-event test on top of competitive seat time at the Louna-Eesti Ralli earlier this month which Tanak won by 38s.
“We have had some quite intense preparations; we did a pre-event test and then a small event, so it is been a big effort to make it as good as possible for Estonia,” said Tanak, who will run as the third car on the road during the Friday leg.
“Obviously, the next two events are purely about performance, so we are putting everything into it and we will find out how close we get to the others.”
Despite losing points to a myriad of reliability-related issues with the Puma Rally1, Tanak – the 2019 World Rally winner – still believes it possesses the qualities needed to reel in and ultimately overtake defending champion Kalle Rovanpera in the points’ standings.
“Now we are going into the second half of the season we are definitely not letting the Championship go, so we feel like we need to increase our game and put everything in,” he continued.
“It is going to be a short turnaround to Finland [August 3-6], so if something isn’t quite working in Estonia the week in-between will be flat out, but hopefully in Estonia we will be on a good level already.”
M-Sport’s Team Principal Richard Millener believes with the efforts made behind the scenes, coupled with the huge support Tanak is set to receive, a strong maximum score is there for the taking at the rally, based around the city of Tartu.
“Compared to the last event in Kenya, Estonia is a completely different challenge. It’s one of the fastest events in the season, and this year one of the most important for us – the home event of Ott,” said Millener. “It would be fantastic to see Ott do well at home, and that is of course the goal for the rally.”
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