THE TITLE FIGHT
TANAK AND OGIER GO HEAD-TO-HEAD
Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas and, it would seem, World Rally Championship protagonists don’t vote for Turkey. For the second year in succession, the Marmaris-based event shoved a stick in the spokes of two of the three men chasing the top of the table.
Last year it was Ott Tanak who rose while Thierry Neuville and Sebastien Ogier fell. Last month Ogier was in the Asian ascendancy as the Turquoise Coast terrorised Tanak and Neuville.
Therefore, as we head to this week’s Rally GB, Tanak is 17 points up on
Ogier, with Neuville a further 13 back. There are three rounds – GB, Spain and Australia – remaining and a possible 90 points on the table. But let’s look further into the numbers, and beyond the fact that Ogier is five-nil up on both Tanak and Neuville in terms of Welsh wins.
Citroen star Ogier has dominated Britain’s round of the WRC for five of the past six years. And even on the one that got away, in 2017, he wasn’t too stressed, as his third place meant he celebrated a fifth world championship title.
If we wind back to 2013 and the start of the Deeside-based era of Rally GB, Ogier has been fastest on 36 of the 128 stages. He’s led for 93 of them – that’s 72% of the stages run in the past six years. Between Jari-matti Latvala’s win in 2012 and Elfyn Evans hitting the front on the first run at Myherin in 2017, nobody except for Ogier had led this rally. That equated to a 1852-day rule at the very top of the timesheets.
That is exceptional, and is also the reason why Ogier is a favourite to make it six Rally GB wins from seven. Furthermore, he arrives on the back of that superb victory in Turkey. But the man himself is not so sure. “We won the last round,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean everything is right straight away. We still have work to do, we still have to find more pace and find a good set-up for the car for Wales.”
Ogier’s mood is balanced by the fact that, three weeks before champagne in Turkey, there was abject misery with seventh place and a country mile off the pace in Germany. The reigning champion is a realist – the Citroen C3 WRC is getting there, but there’s a way to go yet.
His own team aside, Ogier is very well aware that the biggest hindrance towards keeping the crown on his head is Toyota star Tanak. The Estonian has won 21 Rally GB stages and led for 14 of them – and all 14 of those were last year, when he slaughtered the very best of the best. His Yaris WRC hit the front in Clocaenog, first thing on Friday morning, and his rivals didn’t see him for dust. He built a lead at will and was well and truly in control of the rally when he turned into a left-hander on the hill towards Hafren out of Sweet Lamb. The sumpguard of his Toyota dug in to the surface and sheared, slicing into the car’s waterworks and forcing Tanak to stop on the other side of the corner.
That one really hurt – talk to him about it now, and the pain is still there. And that’s another part of what makes Tanak so dangerous this week. He’s fuelled by more than the chase for the championship – he wants revenge on the rally that broke his heart 12 months ago. Put this to him and he laughs, but it’s true. And he knows it.
So the six-year Rally GB stats favour Ogier, but what about the indications of form we’ve had across the 2019 season? Since the start of the campaign in Monte Carlo, Tanak has won 61 of the 202 stages run, Neuville is next on 34, while Ogier has topped 21. Toyota struggled last time out in Turkey, where the Yaris
WRC wasn’t able to match the pace of its rivals, but that was a one-off.
“To be honest, we didn’t expect to be the fastest in Turkey and now, hopefully, the difficult events are behind us,” says Tanak. “The rallies coming now are the ones where we have been strong and we’ve had a good performance in the past. I’m looking forward to Wales – I like that rally. What happened last year, the team is confident it won’t happen again. We’ve been through enough corners similar to that without any trouble.
“The character of the roads [in Wales] is really nice, but it is difficult. The conditions can make it complicated – we’ve got some driving in the night coming, and when that happens you can always have the fog and the rain. It can be tough. It’s also one of the most demanding when it gets muddy – the grip changes all the time, and trying to get a feeling and some confidence in these conditions is not so easy.”
Prior to Turkey, Tanak was sitting pretty with a 33-point lead. An ECU failure on the second morning, allied to Ogier’s masterful drive, cut that advantage by 16. “Of course Turkey was disappointing,” says Tanak, “but at the same time maybe it only cost us four points. Like I said, we didn’t expect to be fastest there, but that wasn’t as hard as Sardinia [where the powersteering failed on the final stage and he fell from first to fifth]. That was bad. Now I’m looking to Wales, only forward. I won’t give more pressure to the team. We know what we have to do.”
Thirty points down on Tanak after he went off the road on the second morning in Turkey, Neuville has to be the outsider for the title, but what about his hopes for Wales this week? “I like it,” he says. “It’s a rally where you can attack and make some good time. It’s a nice one.”
But it’s also an event Neuville has never won. He’s been on the podium two of the past three years, but the Hyundai driver has never genuinely threatened to show the rest of the field the way home. Hence, he hasn’t led the event for the past six years and he’s ‘only’ managed 14 stage wins.
What is it that makes Wales such a challenge? Ogier talks openly about how tricky he found the conditions in his early years – which you’d never expect considering his debut on the event 11 years ago. Driving a Citroen C4 WRC for the first time, he made the best of some of the worst conditions in recent memory to lead the first loop. Can’t have been that hard… “But the next day we crashed,” says Ogier. “Honestly, it was tricky to read the road and understand the grip changes. The weather that year was really crazy with snow, ice and rain and mud. Crazy.
“This rally can offer a very big difference in the conditions, and it’s so important that you stay calm. We are going into the night again and sometimes, especially when you are in the fog, you are struggling to see the road, you really have the feeling that you are going too slow. But you must do the best with what you have and you need to remember the others are going to struggle as well.”
Experience and maturity mean so much in Wales. As Ogier’s has outlined, it’s easy to get bamboozled by the way
the road looks. It can be deceptive, and not always in a bad way.
“In the end, sometimes the grip can be not too bad,” says Ogier. “Even if it’s wet, the rocky surface can give you good grip. But then suddenly you can come to some places where it changes a lot and grip can be very low – experience helps you to read that a little bit better. Early in the career you also struggle to find the right rhythm and you believe that you need to drive at 120% to be fast. It’s maybe only later on, with some more maturity, that you understand that’s not the way to win rallies; it’s a way to be fast, but maybe not most of the time to go the total distance or to win the rally.”
Going the distance is everything in Wales this week, but how the three title protagonists get there is open to debate. They all need a result, but Neuville needs what would be a maiden British win the most. “Everything is still possible,” says the Hyundai man. “So we keep pushing. Nothing changes.”
One thing Turkey highlighted was the need for a good wingman in what’s turning out to be an epic fight for this year’s title. Citroen’s Esapekka Lappi backed Ogier up perfectly, and more will be expected from him this week. Lappi was on the podium in third place last year, and Finns always thrive on a fast gravel rally. But there’s no shortage of support for Neuville or Tanak either.
Hyundai brings Craig Breen back to the team (after his mid-season i20
Coupe WRC debut in Finland), and the Irishman was right in the thick of the fight for victory in Wales with Citroen last year. Between Breen, and that most Welsh of Norwegians Andreas Mikkelsen (he lived in Ruthin, in the middle of the GB route, through his late teenage years while he was starting out in the sport), the South Korean manufacturer puts forward a solid proposition for GB.
But the real strength sits with Toyota. Northern Irishman Kris Meeke is a man who knows what’s needed to get the best out of these woods. He’s been here – in various cars – 10 times before and finished second in 2015. Meeke and teammate Latvala both made their WRC debuts in Wales in 2002. Since then, the Finn has been ever-present and this week is his 18th start on Rally GB.
Latvala and Meeke both demonstrated their ability to drive for the team and for Tanak in Turkey. The Yaris wasn’t at the height of its powers last time out, but neither driver pushed in the powerstage, not wanting to potentially lift points out of Tanak’s total, while simultaneously safeguarding their positions for Toyota. A repeat of this summer’s German 1-2-3, with Tanak out front, would be a dream come true for the Toyota squad. But Ogier, Neuville and the conditions are ready, willing and able to play their part. Get set for an absolute classic.