SERVICE PARK SHOCKWAVES: TANAK QUITS TO FUEL TALK OF BREEN SWAP DEAL
Ott Tanak leaves Hyundai to complete weekend of who-goes-where weekend in the WRC
The World Rally Championship driver market has been blown wide open following a sensational Sunday night in Spain.
Hours after eight-time champ Sebastien Ogier took his first win of the Rally1 hybrid era to ensure a sixth makes’ crown for Toyota, Hyundai announced that Ott Tanak will leave at the end of the season, fuelling speculation of a swap deal with M-Sport’s Craig Breen for 2023.
Tanak is quitting Hyundai one year earlier than expected, citing personal reasons for his shock departure.
Irishman Breen, meanwhile, has struggled for form in his first full
WRC season and was a distant ninth place in Spain, his co-driver Paul Nagle’s final event before he retires.
M-Sport team boss Richard Millener refused to disclose details of his squad’s line-up for 2023 but vowed to “work as hard as we can to strengthen the team to make sure we are in a fight next year.”
Toyota arrived in Spain with only one objective: to mop up the all-important 2022 World Rally Championship manufacturers’ title. It did so after an intriguing head-tohead between the newly crowned drivers’ champion Kalle Rovanpera and eight-time title winner Sebastien Ogier. Everybody else was making up the numbers.
Rally Spain is undoubtedly a crowd pleaser, with Spanish fans being the most populous and passionate on the calendar. The service park also bustled with team members’ friends and family seeking out some sunshine around the coastal town of Salou.
Yet out on the stages, Catalunya seldom serves up a fizzer of an event for its huge crowds to savour.
Without the euphoria of Carlos Sainz’s win in 1992, the drama of Colin McRae’s inability to follow team orders in 1995, Philippe Bugalski’s shock win in a twowheel-drive kit car in 1999 or Gilles Panizzi’s victorious donuts in 2002, it is generally a predictable affair.
The smooth, flowing asphalt favours the dominant team of each season, which put the Toyotas in the box seats from the start.
Yes, Hyundai has made progress through the summer, but from the off the team’s trio of drivers – Thierry Neuville, Ott Tanak and local hero Dani Sordo – were making discontented noises.
Handling problems, most notably understeer, were giving the Alzenau based team headaches throughout Friday’s opening stages. Adding to his handling gripes, Tanak was also delayed on the opening leg by an intermittent hybrid failure.
The i20 Rally1 appears to be a car in which Neuville is more at home than his team-mates, and at the end of the first loop on Friday morning, the Belgian felt confident enough to unleash some of his customary swashbuckling and nip into the overall lead. He was soon repassed by the Toyotas, however.
Rovanpera had made the most of his starting position at the front of the field, with heavy rain in recent days providing a wealth of muck, rocks and dirt to pull out of the cuts onto the racing surface for the rest of the field to negotiate.
The young Finn made hay and took the early lead but Ogier, starting seventh on the road, was pleased to discover that most of the ditch debris had been swept away again by the time that he arrived.
From the start of the afternoon loop, the French veteran was fully back in the swing of things and building a handsome lead. It seemed like the natural order was being restored in what has been an odd first year for Ogier since stepping back from full-time WRC duty.
It began with a final-day puncture denying him his record-extending ninth Monte Carlo win before his focus switched to the World
Endurance Championship.
Running in the LMP2 class midfield soon lost its appeal, however, and once the Le Mans 24 Hours was dispatched Ogier quit the series rather than trundle round in the lesser six-hour events.
His sporadic WRC campaign was also oddly muted, with the Toyota team’s focus rightly falling upon Rovanpera’s title bid, while trying to help team-mate Elfyn Evans recover the form that had him run Ogier close for both the 2020 and
2021 titles.
Catalunya, and the dangling carrot of the manufacturers’ title, therefore provided Ogier’s first real chance to shine since Monte Carlo – and he seized it with both hands. On Friday afternoon he relentlessly stole a second or two from Rovanpera on every stage.
This was the pattern for the rest of the weekend, with the Finn and title-winning co-driver Jonne Halttunen pressing on regardless and whooping with delight as they survived more than one narrow escape along the way throughout the first two days.
The duelling Toyotas pulled clear of all three Hyundais, which sat in line astern: Neuville heading a downcast Tanak and a frustrated Sordo.
Something was not clicking for the Spaniard on his home event, where he had hoped to perform his habitual role of scooping manufacturer points at the crucial moment. Given Hyundai’s midseason resurgence, there was also much hope that he might challenge for the home victory that repeatedly slipped his grasp over the past 16 seasons.
As it was, Sordo was howling in frustration at times, totally nonplussed by the gulf in his stage times to those of the frontrunners. A puncture on Friday did little to lift his spirits.
With no contract yet in place for 2023, it made Sordo’s stage wins, when they eventually came late on Saturday and early on the final morning, a cause for some relief.
“I don’t do this only for the money,” he said. “If you do only rally for money, you don’t have the passion. If you don’t
have this feeling to be competitive with these guys, you need to stop. If I do next year, I don’t know yet… it is quite difficult sometimes.”
Speaking of difficult, it was another trial by fire for M-Sport in Spain. Team leader Craig Breen was confronted by the worst of the road conditions on Friday, struggling to hold on to the Toyotas and Hyundais on co-driver Paul Nagle’s final WRC appearance.
Breen was left battling Evans for sixth place after Toyota’s beleaguered Welshman suffered an opening day puncture. The rest of the M-Sport squad meanwhile lined up behind Breen and the fourth Toyota of Takamoto Katsuta.
On Sunday morning a dislodged drain cost Breen heavily and he dropped to ninth, which in turn elevated returnee Adrien Fourmaux to the head of the Ford train.
Having been benched for the previous two events after one too many shunts this season, the promising French youngster was erring on the side of caution in Spain. Fourmaux and fellow countryman Pierre-Louis Loubet were both elevated in the M-Sport order after Gus Greensmith smote the barriers on Saturday morning and ended his relevance to the top 10.
Belgian-Greek gentleman driver Jourdan Serderidis filled the fifth Ford Puma in the M-Sport fleet, cheerfully pedalling his way through the stages despite an intermittent power steering fault, among other issues. At least Serderidis ended the event with a smile.
For a team that started 2022 so brightly, Catalunya delivered another in a string of disappointing results for M-Sport. Team founder Malcolm Wilson remained clear-eyed and remarkably candid as he watched his crews fill the bottom of the WRC order.
“There’s no question that we feel we’ve built the best car that we’ve ever built in the Puma and, yeah, [we had] a great start to the season… and every time we’ve had Seb [Loeb] in the car then he’s led,” he said.
“It’s been a difficult season but we’ve been there before. We never won an event from 2013 to 2017 so at least we’ve won one event this year.”
Over at Toyota meanwhile the champagne was on ice by Sunday morning, even though Neuville’s relentless quest for pace had been rewarded by catching and passing Rovanpera. The Finn lost more time on Sunday morning to the same drain that cost Breen dear, but third place was enough to ensure that the title headed home to Tokyo on Sunday evening.
“We are working on the balance of the car… going up and down on the springs and roll bars and working on the diffs,” said Neuville after splitting the Toyota stars. “I felt like a mechanic all weekend!”
For Ogier, however, the weekend was one of unalloyed triumph: his first win in Catalunya for six years came with a full five-point bonus from winning the Powerstage and the honour of delivering the manufacturers’ crown.
“Guys, we are World champions, thank you so much,” Ogier beamed at the finish while co-driver Benjamin Veillas was overcome at taking his first win after years on the gravel crew. The page may have turned, but as Malcolm Wilson will agree, having a Sebastien on the team is still an invaluable thing.