TANAK UNLOCKS THE POTENTIAL
ESTONIAN FLIES TO THE TOP OF THE WRC IN SWEDEN
Kris Meeke and Elfyn Evans stood and stared at the enormous television screen which dominated the far end of the Rally Sweden service park. It took a moment to sink in. The immediate prospect of conversation was lost to fireworks, helicopters and the hordes of ecstatic Estonians standing just the other side of the barrier.
Both drivers had just completed their run at the powerstage and were waiting and watching the progress of their rivals. Evans had provided the benchmark for the Torsby test until Thierry Neuville went nine-tenths of a second quicker. The M-sport man smiled thinly as the final meaningful time hit the screen.
“I feel a bit sh*t now,” he said. “I was quite chuffed before.”
Ott Tanak had arrived at the finish. And he’d arrived in some style. Some style being 3.5 seconds faster than anybody over a 5.54-mile winner-takes-all stage.
Twelve months ago, Tanak departed Sweden, heading east, heading home across the Baltic Sea in the darkest of moods. Two rounds into 2018, he sat sixth in the championship. He’d bounced off Meeke’s Citroen into a snowbank and invited Rally Sweden organisers to “screw themselves” after they failed to plough the snowfilled roads. They left that job to him and his Toyota Yaris WRC,
All was not well with Ott. There had been far too much winter in the WRC’S winter rally, with him and Sebastien Ogier the highest profile victims of FIA’S running order regulations.
This time around, with winter all-but traded for an early Scandinavian spring, Tanak set the record straight and did what his friend and mentor Markko Martin had so wanted to do.
Except Tanak didn’t just win Rally Sweden. He realised the collective fears of his rivals. He and co-driver Martin Jarveoja dominated the rally. Or at least the weekend.
M-sport man Teemu Suninen was the only driver capable of holding a candle to Tanak. And the Ford Fiesta Wrc-driving Finn actually led overnight on Friday.
Suninen’s not one to talk the talk and he succeeded in looking genuinely underwhelmed at the news that he was ahead on a WRC round for the first time in his career. It was nice, but there were no prizes on Friday night. His confidence was boosted, but he remained a weekend away from turning a leg one lead into a maiden first victory.
And key to anybody’s victory would be the ability to second-guess the conditions. In the fortnight between the seasonopener in Monte Carlo and round two, everybody had headed north in search of snow, ice and the key to Sweden. Everybody except Citroen found exceptional conditions.
Minus 15, solid ice and perfect, lean-onme snowbanks were the order of the day. Then, as Ogier said: “winter melted.”
And that made things just a little bit complicated.
Friday’s roads straddled the Norwegian- Swedish border and, running at higher altitude and latitude, offered the best of the conditions. At least they did in the morning.
Third on the road and there was still plenty for Tanak’s studs to bite into. The Toyota man rocketed into the lead.
Then, the combination of rising temperatures softening the stage and the passing of a 50-strong historic field, muddied the ice and rutted the road. The advantage was passed to those running further down the field; the front men: Ogier, Thierry Neuville and Tanak were left to clear the line of mud, slush and meltwater from the ruts.
Seventh in, Suninen cracked on, won Svullrya (for the second time) by 5.2s and jumped into a similarly-sized lead.
Asked how his pace was possible – and with speculationof some eurekamoments in terms of the Fiesta’s Swedish set-up after a dismal 2018 showing – Suninen considered his options when explaining the upturn in pace to Motorsport News.
“How should I answer that one?” he said. After more thinking time, he pulled himself forward on the steering wheel. I leaned in. “Rear bumper,” he said. What? “Rear bumper. Look at rear bumper.” It wasn’t really there. “Exactly! That’s the difference.” With that, he fixed a grin, pulled first and headed to bed in P1.
For the uninitiated in Swedish rally speak… anybody coming in without a rear bumper has clearly been on a charge and left that particular body part embedded in a snowbank somewhere.
Friday night, M-sport was the place to be. Richard Millener headed to the end of day press conference as a rally-leading team principal for the first time. But surely this early lead brought the complication of a strategic approach to the weekend.
Not a chance. The only strategy was to keep oiling the gears he wanted Suninen to throw at the job.
“We’re not here to finish second,” he said. “Our priorities are different this year. We’re not really chasing the championship, we want rally wins. Teemu’s already achieved one objective for a season – to lead overnight – so we might as well try to tick another box…”
Saturday morning’s opener in Rammen would be a real test for Teemu. On a level playing field, could he keep Tanak behind? No. But he was only 1.8s down going into the next stage.
“I have to keep the throttle open all the time,” he said. “And no mistakes.”
On reflection, he’ll be wishing he’d shut the taps fractionally earlier going into a tightening medium left in Hagfors. He slipped into a snowbank. His dream done.
“Snowbank,” said Suninen. “It sucked us in. We took too much speed to the corner.” The staccato, stare-straightahead statement was pure devastated Finn. This could so easily have been a devastated Juha Kankkunen in a broken Lancia or a heartbroken Hannu Mikkola aboard a punctured Audi.
By lunchtime service, the response was slightly fuller.
“The spectators were pushing in different directions,” he said. “We needed Finnish spectators, they lift the car. We could have dropped 10 seconds…”
Instead, it was a minute and a half before the locals got themselves together and hauled the motor back to the road.
“All that work,” said Suninen. “The perfect test and weeks’ of work… all gone in one corner.”
With the Finn finished, Tanak’s lead ballooned to half a minute. And Toyota’s man moved into safety mode, middle of the road, in the ruts and well away from the increasingly soft snowbanks.
Now, here’s the bit which should concern everybody except Toyota team principal Tommi Makinen. In the next eight stages, Tanak was fastest on two, but still built his lead towards the minutemark. And then came the powerstage. What would be the tactic?
“I won’t take risks,” he said. “If there’s a couple of points there, I’ll take them, but I won’t take a risk.”
And then he set the time. That stunning 3.5s powerstage hammerblow.
And then, given what had just happened had destroyed the opposition, he followed that up with the perfect line.
“Once Teemu was gone, there wasn’t so much of a fight… it was actually a little bit boring. The only time I pushed to the maximum was really in the powerstage.”
So, in the five and a half miles where everybody pushed and chased the fivepointer as hard as possible, Tanak was 0.63s per mile faster.
Granted, the road evolved and got quicker with each passing car. But 0.63s per mile. That’s a concern for the best of the rest with 12 rounds to go. But not for Tanak. “I know how hard Markko tried for this one,” said Tanak. And, were it not for a freak broken wheel aboard a Ford Focus WRC04 15 years earlier, Tanak would have been the second Estonian celebrating in these parts.
As it was, he’s the first. And the first Estonian to lead the championship.
Andreas Mikkelsen held second for much of Saturday, but was forced to share it with Esapekka Lappi ahead of the final day. With Mikkelsen’s Hyundai teammate Neuville just 2.3 further back and Elfyn Evans in the picture too, there was plenty to play for on Sunday’s repeated Likenas test with a Torsby powerstage to conclude proceedings.
Mikkelsen was the big loser on the first test, dropping from joint second to fourth as he struggled with an ‘unreactive’ i20. That time loss did, however, save the potential for management blushes, had they needed to ask the Norwegian to step aside for title-chasing Belgian Neuville.
For the second time in two 2019 rallies, the powerstage would decide far more than the direction of the bonus points. A missed braking point, a fudged apex and second could easily become fifth and viceversa. In the end, nothing changed. Tanak massacred everybody, Neuville got fractionally closer to Lappi and Evans closed up to Mikkelsen. Kris Meeke rounded out the top six, delivering the second sensible point-scoring drive he’d sought at the season’s start. The fun starts in Mexico for the Northern Irishman.
But what of the old boys? What of Sebastien Loeb and Marcus Gronholm? Given that we’ll be seeing the Frenchman (he was an undramatic seventh, by the way) six times this season, let’s focus on the veteran Finn.
Much was made of Marcus Gronholm’s return to the series in a Toyota Yaris WRC. It’s fair to say the two-time world champion’s belated – by one year – 50th birthday present to himself didn’t quite go to plan. It was, in fact, hard to argue with
WRCTV’S Jon Desborough, who suggested he might have preferred a couple of pints and a curry instead. Gronholm’s misery started early, when he was 11s off the pace in the four-mile shakedown stage. Sitting in front of the television screen in Toyota’s mission control, he stared at the times. Don’t look,” he said. “You can just about see me. I’m at the bottom of the screen.” A former rival grinned. “On the upside… you are seventh quickest in WRC 2.” The next morning, Gronholm reverted exceptional to what he’d career known at best the throughout top of the sport, an including five Sweden wins. He threw gears at it and drove harder and faster. That wasn’t the answer this time. Fromthe first metres of the first stage, I knew my pacenotes were too slow,” said Gronholm. “And then a corner comes and takes you out.” He spun on Friday’s opener. Again on the second stage and then went off into a tree on the third.
“My driving,” he sighed, “was not good. After the first spin, I said to Timo [Rautiainen, co-driver]: ‘How much did we lose with the spin?’ He gave me this look and said: ‘It doesn’t matter…’”
At the same time, Gronholm admitted the shape of the latest generation of World Rally Car had also worked against him.
“I remember when I was in this rally the last time,” he said. “I could put the front bumper of the car to the snowbank and slide right around the corner. But now, all this aero goes into the snow and suddenly zip, we are around again.”
An afternoon off and Gronholm was back with a more tempered approach for the weekend.
“I was off so many times yesterday I don’t want to push anymore,” he said.
In an effort to tame the Japanese beast, Gronholm was working his left foot hard on the middle pedal, regularly lighting up the discs.
By Saturday night, he admitted he’d seen the full extent of the progress of the World Rally Car across the last decade. Having driven more familiar stages in Sweden, he knew what sort of speed he’d carried through some corners in the past. The present day was a scary place.
“I can see from my notes,” he said. “Before I would have to lift to come through a corner. But in this car, with all this aero, bam – you just go. I would say it is a little bit scary when I don’t have the confidence in the notes or in the aero.
“I think this comeback thing was tougher than I thought it would be.”
Surely not, surely there’s time for a Finland?
“Finland? What? Oy, oy, oy… no! No to Finland. No to this. I’m done. Pah, I’m finished now.”
Ahead of the event, Gronholm’s former rival Petter Solberg reckoned Bosse had told him he was going to win.
Gronholm’s riposte was rapid. “Petter, I told you I would win the Grandpa class!”
In that respect, he delivered on his promise. But 38th place wasn’t what he came for. Best remember the big man in his pomp; cutting corners, getting away with it and winning Sweden for fun.
Winning for fun brings us neatly back to Tanak, who did just that on Sunday. The best of the rest tried and failed to slow the Estonian express – next month we’ll see whether he can master the champion-elect’s next trick: can he ride the Mexican wave and win from the front on the loose-surface gravel in Leon?