Tänak adds extra Estonia warm-up rally
World champion Ott Tänak will continue his build up to the FIA World Rally Championship’s restart event at Rally Estonia (4 - 6 September) when he contests a second national rally on home roads in his Hyundai i20 WRC.
Tänak will tackle the RedGrey South Estonia Rally on August 21 / 22, where he could be joined by team-mate Thierry Neuville and a pair of Toyota Yaris WRCs for Sébastien Ogier and Elfyn Evans.
Tänak won the Viru Rally in Estonia at the start of last month. Since then he continued to level his learning curve aboard the Alzenau-built machine at last weekend’s Rally di Alba in Italy when he finished second to Neuville. He says he learned plenty from the outing.
“I found some good settings,” he said. “We did three loops of the same stages, so it was good to understand how the changes we were making to the car were working. OK, the road got more dirty, but it was still very good.”
Tänak admitted his set-up was wrong early in the event, but he got it right for the last loop.
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Read More“The event was quite like a test for us,” he said. “And the experience [of getting the set-up wrong] helped to teach me good lessons and give us good data for the car. I’m pretty confident we found something, some very good things, which can help.
“The car feels good on Tarmac. We know the championship is going to be tight and we don’t have too many opportunities. We definitely experienced a lot and this is a big boost going forward,” he added.
• Full coverage from Rally Estonia will be available on WRC+ All Live here, including every stage broadcast as it happens as well as key interviews, features and expert analysis from the service park.