Hyundai team principal and motorsport director Cyril Abiteboul has clarified comments from Ott Tänak suggesting that he had texted the 2019 world champion to slow down on the Saturday morning of Central European Rally.
At midday service Tänak implied the Hyundai boss had waded in with team orders after his scratch time on SS9. Tänak won the first pass of Granit und Wald by four seconds and cut the gap to then-rally leader and team-mate Thierry Neuville to only half a second – though he later fell back behind Sébastien Ogier and stayed there until the end of Saturday’s action.
“Cyril didn’t like our first stage time as we started to get some messages,” said Tänak at midday service. “But the middle one, I guess the rhythm was a bit too safe. Definitely we shouldn’t have given that much away but the last stage [of the morning] was fine.”
Once back at service after the afternoon loop, Tänak clarified those comments further: “It already started yesterday,” he told DirtFish. “For sure, after Andreas [Mikkelsen] retired, it was very difficult for the team to really balance out if you risk to get more points or you risk to lose a lot of points. It’s been very challenging, I guess, for the management to really balance out what you want to do.”
Asked by DirtFish to clarify those ‘text message’ comments by Tänak, Abiteboul explained he hadn’t instructed Tänak to slow down, only to consider the risks involved. Hyundai had already been reduced to two points-scoring cars for Saturday after Mikkelsen crashed into a fence and retired a day earlier, though can contribute to its Sunday total.
Abiteboul has been taking a "high-level helicopter view" over controlling how his drivers approach Central European Rally
“We are not really asking to slow down to a time, it’s really risk,” said Abiteboul. “And I’m absolutely in no position to measure the risk that he’s taking. If the confidence is there, you know, frankly, you can be super fast and that’s fine. And equally, you can be slower, but if the confidence is not there, you can actually take more risk. So it’s really about that.
“So we’re talking about risk, how much you take risk rather than how fast you go. And that’s two different notions.”
Abiteboul dismissed any suggestion that Tänak would be asked to take a safer approach than Neuville to help preserve the team’s lead in the manufacturers’ championship, pointing out that both drivers needed to push to keep Toyota at bay.
“Right now, we need everyone’s contribution,” said Abiteboul. “You see how tight it is. It was tight coming here in both championships, in particular the manufacturers’. It’s even tighter tonight. We need everyone’s contribution. And he [Ott] will be free to drive tomorrow.
Despite the early text to Tänak it was Neuville that blinked first, overshooting a left hander and ending up in a ditch when trying to get back on the road, through which he lost half a minute and fell from first to fourth.
Despite the error costing Hyundai points to Toyota in the manufacturers’ championship, Abiteboul insisted there was no failure of risk management on the championship leader’s part.
“I think the approach was very clear,” said Abiteboul. “And I think it was very clear also for Thierry what to do, what not to try to do. We had no particular intent to have any closure this weekend in advance of the next rally. But that’s one of these things. The gaps are so low.
Tänak and Neuville may not see eye-to-eye on the drivers' title fight but both remain obligated to collect as many manufacturers' championship points as possible for Hyundai
“I think we should be also fair to Thierry that what he was fighting for is not necessarily just the driver championship, but it’s also the team, the manufacturer championship. Because he could have had an easy weekend, saying, oh, you know what? I’m going to cruise until Japan and that’s it. With the buffer that he had, probably that would have been enough. But I think the fact that he knows that we are also fighting for the team championship is also the reason why he was pushing and taking risks.”
Abiteboul admitted to struggling with his role in managing risk versus reward in his role as Hyundai team principal: “We try to tell them what we feel that they are in process of doing, a bit too much or not enough, which is super difficult, if I’m honest.
“I think they themselves struggle to appreciate the risk that they are taking stage after stage, corner after corner, when the grip level is changing so dramatically. It’s difficult for them to appreciate. It’s difficult for us to measure also.
“Obviously, when I saw the time of Ott this morning, I thought, wow, he’s brave, certainly brave. And the next stage was very different, so it’s even very difficult to read. So we try to be here to listen to them and also take a bit of a high-level helicopter view, but I don’t think there is a perfect way to manage those situations.”
Tänak has provisionally taken five points out of Neuville’s lead in the drivers’ championship, reducing the gap to 24 points, based on the current Saturday points from CER. Toyota meanwhile carved six points out of Hyundai’s advantage in the manufacturers’ championship by ending Saturday in first (Ogier) and third place (Elfyn Evans), provisionally reducing the gap from 17 to 11 points before Sunday’s action begins.
