Tanak keeps WRC title fight alive
The penultimate round of the FIA World Rally Championship delivered plenty of plot twists with Ott Tanak taking the Central European Rally.
Despite all of the ire surrounding the WRC’s new point system in 2024, this season has delivered its fair share of dramatic chaos, and the Central European Rally (CER) was no exception.
The Round 12 tarmac clash ahead of the finale in Japan saw Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville enter the weekend with a chance to sew up his maiden title, but the WRC’s perennial bridesmaid will have to wait another round after a series of costly errors dropped him from the lead.
In a pressurised rally of fine margins throughout, Toyota’s Sebastien Ogier also let another win slip by again crashing out from the lead on the Sunday, with Hyundai’s Ott Tanak delivering his second win of the year as a result after spending all of the Saturday breathing down the Frenchman’s neck.
The #8 i20N driver ended up winning by seven seconds from TGR’s Elfyn Evans, whilst Neuville slipped into the final podium spot, +39.8 seconds in arrears from the leader.
Tanak’s victory alongside compatriot co-driver Martin Jarveoja – the 21st of his career – cuts the championship margin from 29 to 25 points, but to take a second title, he’ll need Neuville to find trouble on Japan’s often slippery roads in the Aichi and Gifu prefectures.
“It’s not up to me, Thierry will decide. All I can do is push on in Japan and try to score as many points as possible,” Tanak said.
“CER was really intense. It was demanding from the start, with four drivers so close together and never more than 10 seconds apart. The conditions were never easy, and although the weather was better on Sunday, it was still challenging and unpredictable.
“It was a big fight on Sunday with Seb (Ogier), we really tried to push today to secure the win. It’s good for the team that only a Hyundai driver can win the title, but there’s still a battle coming with Toyota for the manufacturers’.”
That means it will be the first WRC drivers title for the German team-based Korean manufacturer, and also holds a 15 point lead Toyota in the makers stakes, as it looks to add a third (2019-2020) manufacturers title, and end TGR’s three year reign.
The unique format of the CER offered 18 stages across 302.51 competitive kilometres, beginning in Prague, Czechia, before featuring stages in Austria, Czechia, and Germany, with the rally ending in the southern Deutsch town of Passau near.
Joining the regular crews, part timers Andreas Mikkelsen (Hyundai), and Gregoire Munster (Ford M-Sport) competed as manufacturer point-scoring options, whilst Sami Pajari (TGR) and Jourdan Serderidis (Ford) also drove Rally1’s.
To kick off the first asphalt affair after seven straight gravel outings, Ogier took the early lead after two stages in Czechia, leading an edgy Neuville by +0.9, with part timer Mikkelsen in third.
But after his hay-bail clip on Thursday, Neuville put the foot down for the first full-day (seven stages in Czechia) to lead Ogier by 6.4 seconds overnight with Tanak in third, which meant the Belgian driver was in the box seat for a Saturday title push.
The crews delved into six stages across Germany and Austria – with only a brief incursion into the former – for the 123.46 km Day 3 – and SS11 in Austria’s Schardinger Innviertel was where one hectic minute saw Neuville and Wydaeghe drop the ball on some pace note confusion.
Two back-to-back off-road excursions saw him drop to fourth, giving Ogier the ascendancy, as well as letting Tanak back into the title race.
That part ran tight all day, with Ogier taking three to two, to lead by just +5.2 overnight with Evans into third.
With the crews heading to Germany for the final four stages, it was Tanak who took the reins early by flipping the deficit into a +1.9sec advantage, as well as keeping the lead through SS16.
The penultimate stage then saw Ogier overshoot the same left hander for the second straight stage, but this time he found some trees and a telegraph pole and parted ways with his left rear wheel.
That left Tanak to fend off Evans, whilst Toyota’s Takamoto Katsuta proved the fastest on the day to bank vital manufacturer points with Evans, meaning that both the drivers and makers titles will be on the line in the finale for the first time since 2021.
Behind the fifth placed Katsuta, Munster equaled his highest ever WRC finish for Ford M-Sport in sixth, whilst WRC2 Citroen winner Nikolay Gryazin placed seventh over Skoda driver Oliver Solberg and Rally2 Toyota driver Filip Mares.
That also put Solberg in the box-seat for the second tier title in Japan, with Citroen’s Yohan Rossel still a chance 12 point back.
The 2024 finale at Rally Japan kicks off in Aichi, southwest of Tokyo, on November 21-24, where Neuville will look to end his unenviable record of being vice-champion on five occasions.
Photo by McKlein / LAT Images
WRC STANDINGS AFTER 12 ROUNDS
- Neuville/Wydaeghe 225
- Tanak/Jarveoja 200
- Evans/Martin 185
- Ogier/Landais 166
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