Can anyone stop Toyota and tanak?
The Japanese manufacturer had the fastest car for much of 2018 and starts this season at monte Carlo as the team to beat.
Sebastien Ogier listened in more closely. Suddenly, the six-time champion was interested. He wanted to know more, even though it was nearly 2100hrs and he was being framed for what felt like the thousandth picture on the eve of the World Rally Championship launch.
Deep inside Birmingham’s NEC, there was a room where all the promotional assets were kept for the following day. Among those assets was a list of everybody’s competition numbers for the coming season.
“You have them?” questions Ogier. “Come on then, tell me the number for Ott [Tanak]… I want to know exactly what number I’m going to be looking for on the board when I get to the end of the stages this season.”
Without trying, Ogier had answered the question he would be asked most the next day.
During the launch, the Frenchman trotted out a well-worn line about everybody being in contention. But Tanak’s the man. And Toyota’s the team for 2019.
“If you look to the speed from last season, especially the second half of last year, then you have to think about Ott and the Yaris,” says Ogier.
Tanak’s a very straightforward fella. When he talks, you listen. Especially about the season ahead, a season where – and this bit will really concern his rivals – he hopes to be faster and more focused on winning.
“The start of last year was a bit complicated,” says Tanak of his first few rallies in a Yaris WRC. “Going into the events, we didn’t know what to expect and that made any kind of strategy difficult. It was always difficult to know where we would be and what we would be capable of.
“This year I believe we have a bit more knowledge of the rallies and it’s the same with Monte Carlo [the opening round this weekend]; we should know what we can do. Taking strong points there would definitely be a good start to the season.”
Podiums from his last two trips to the French Alps mark Tanak out as a genuine threat on round one – a storyline that remains all the way through to the round 14 finale in Australia.
“We’ve always been in the top three to fight for the title, but it hasn’t worked out,” continues Tanak. “But I guess now, going into the second season in the same team, the feeling is much more relaxed. Of course, we have the same target as last year, but at least we know what tools we have to do it and that makes our lives a lot easier. It also means we can prepare better, go more into the details. I believe we should be more relaxed than we were last year.”
Such talks brings little relief for rivals. Even from within the team, the appreciation of Tanak’s potential is clear. Toyota’s latest recruit Kris Meeke has only been there a couple of months, but he’s seen enough of the Estonian to know what he’ll have to deal with from the #8 Yaris.
“If things had gone a bit differently for Ott last year, he could have won the last six rallies on the trot,” says Meeke. “He’s on it right now.”
And so is the Northern Irishman. You’ll see elsewhere in this issue ( see feature page 6) how Meeke’s mood and motivation has altered for the year ahead; he makes for a fascinating, exciting and forthright interview. Most of all, he makes it clear he’s got the tools he feels he’s lacked for the past two years.
And then there’s the third side of this potentially Wrc-destroying triangle: Jari-matti Latvala. Not for the first time, Latvala comes to the start of a new season with high hopes and solid potential. And, forgive us… we might have said this before, but this really does look to be the friendly Finn’s finest opportunity.
A couple of years ago Latvala arrived at Toyota, having elbowed fellow Volkswagen refugee Andreas Mikkelsen out of the way. If rumour is to be believed, the Norwegian was the preferred option for the Toyota Gazoo Racing management – ironic, given the opportunity was with a team based in Finland to join an all-finnish driver line-up – but such opinion changed when Latvala won on only his second outing with the team.
In the first half of last season, the appetite for seeing him back for a third year had all-but gone. For whatever reason, Latvala had fallen from grace and was near-certain to be shown the door.
He’s back now. J-ML showed real steel to turn things around from the mid-point in Finland last year. Had he converted a strong Spanish lead into a 25-pointer (he lost it with a puncture), he would have outscored
everybody – including team-mate Tanak – with some ease.
Toyota has the potential to win every round of this year’s championship with such a strong driver line-up, but is there an argument for that very strength being the potential undoing of the Japanese giant?
Talk to any one of the three drivers and there’s little chatter about a repeat of the manufacturers’ trophy taken in 2018. It’s all about the drivers’ championship. All about their own ends.
Team principal Tommi Makinen encourages such talk. He’s been there and he’s not interested in curbing their passion, pace or potential with the talk of strategy. Certainly not at this end of the season.
“Tommi understands the driver point of view,” reasons Meeke. “Not once yet have there been any conversations about strategy or anything. Tommi knows when you’re sitting on the startline as a professional driver, you’re going to give your best.
“We’ve all been in the sport long enough to understand how a weekend will develop and, if one driver can capture that sixth sense and dominate the weekend, then the others should know the way it is. It’s just great to be in a team where each driver is capable of winning every rally. Let’s see how that plays out, but Tommi is probably the only man in the service park able to manage that.”
Tanak’s on the same page. He’s not about to ask his team-mates for favours. “We have a strong team and I guess all the drivers are going for the maximum, so there is really no second driver,” says Tanak.
And Latvala? “I feel the car should be reliable and we should have the machinery to fight for the drivers’ title. I think our target, when we go out there, is that we try to do our own thing as well as we can and [for the] first six months try not to think about the championship. Then you see where you are and, by the end of the year, you can start to calculate a bit more.”
Sensing real interest in those words, Latvala slows himself down, checks himself and remembers how important silverware is to carmakers: “The manufacturers’ championship was really important for us last year and, of course, it’s giving a little bit more confidence. We want to renew it and so our focus is on there, but we want to get the drivers’ championship as well.
“Like I said, this [the drivers’ title] is not my focus at the start of the year. It’s not in my mind. Performance wise, we should be on the podium pace all the time. Every rally. Do that and normally you are in with the chance of the championship.”
From a hardware perspective, the Yaris WRC has wintered well. Much of the attention is on the transmission and finding a more driveable solution from all three differentials – but especially the rear. There’s a need for more traction on loose surfaces and a need to be able to put increased levels of torque down on the road.
The biggest area of concern for Toyota last time out was the retirements from rock damage on rallies such as Portugal and Sardinia – the two events that arguably cost Tanak the title. But the Puuppola-based team is confident Turkey demonstrated that issue is sorted. A new tank-like Toyota bounced over everything the Marmaris mountains could lay in its path. Toyota’s chief engineer Tom Fowler reckons the team was too cautious in September, trading too much pace for protection. Fowler has spent the off-season working on a suspension solution that comes closer to squaring the circle that is durable at speed on the WRC’S rockiest of roads.
Two years ago, few gave Makinen’s men a hope. He’d scrambled a team together in a frozen Finnish town with a population of just over a thousand people. How could he take on the world? Even with the help of the world’s biggest carmaker.
It probably helped that he was Tommi Makinen and that the 1000-strong population included names like Harri Rovanpera and Mikko Hirvonen at one time or another. Rallying is a religion in that part of the world. And, in the long, dark, winter nights, the team worked tirelessly to turn an expected bit-part player into the king of the street.
Former laughing stock or not, Toyota’s the one to watch in the season ahead. ■