Toyota star Ott Tänak reckons his team needs to push even harder if it is to win the 2018 WRC title, despite a recent hat-trick of victories – because he knows that the one-two finish in Turkey came despite a poor weekend for outright speed.
In early June the Finn was a full 72 points behind championship leader Thierry Neuville and 45 down on reigning champion Sébastien Ogier.
But now Tänak has won three rallies in a row in Finland, Germany, and Turkey. Last weekend’s Turkey finish was Toyota’s first one-two in 20 years. Such results have catapulted Tänak past Ogier and to within 13 points of Neuville, while giving Toyota the manufacturers’ championship lead. However, he knows he struggled for speed in Turkey and was down in ninth before he benefited from chaos in the rest of the field.
“All the team need to keep their heads down and keep working and focus on the next events,” said Tänak. “We didn’t have the speed at times and we need to keep improving if we want to stay in this fight. The coming events are different challenges. All the people in the team are so motivated to do well. We hope we have enough. I have no doubt that everything is possible. It’s difficult in this moment, when you are used to fighting at the top, and we did not have the pace and this was, maybe, our lowest event of the season.
"But now we have a one-two and it’s been a history-making result for the team. That’s how life is sometimes. We need to carry on like this. We had some weaknesses in events like Sardinia and it’s good to see that the engineers have been working on improvements. We are in the fight now. And we need to focus on this.”
Meanwhile, Neuville, who retired with broken suspension, but came back to take maximum Power Stage bonus points, said: “We are fighting for the championship against some very hard guys to beat. We had to give it everything. In all honesty, I feel we should have taken the win. We were clearly the fastest, especially on Friday when we were first on the road and leading at the end of the day.”
Ogier, who broke a wishbone, fixed it, continued but then crashed out, was also upbeat, adding: “Now we can definitely see it’s a three-way fight. There are still three rallies to go and everything is possible. Nothing is finished yet.”
