There’s perhaps never been a bigger fall from ‘hero to zero’ than Ott Tänak experienced on the final morning of Rally Japan.
His performance had been immaculate over the event’s first three days and 16 stages. Leading comfortably; denying Toyota the big scoop of points it needed to defeat Hyundai.
But his mistake at the very end of Sunday could not have been more costly. In an instant, team-mate Thierry Neuville was confirmed as the new World Rally champion, and suddenly Hyundai had given up the 18 points Tänak had reserved from Saturday and handed them straight to Toyota.
Eventually, Hyundai lost out on a world title double by just three points after a powerstage shootout.
Hyundai Motorsport president and team principal Cyril Abiteboul’s reaction was always going to strike the tone that it did.
“We are all hugely disappointed for sure,” he told DirtFish. “There’s no question about that.”
But intriguingly, Abiteboul chose to take some of the blame for Tänak’s accident.
“We need to discuss about it, how to get better, how to make sure he avoids [this], because there’s been quite a few of these this year,” Abiteboul explained. “He will recognize it himself.
“And if he has the target that I believe he has for what’s coming next in his career, in particular next year, we need to understand how to deal better with this situation. And that’s a we. That’s not just him.
“That’s all together how can we, you know, lay out a plan that is clearer. I think the plan was clear, but I need to understand how I can help him, support him more. I feel that I have a responsibility in what happened to Ott today.”
Abiteboul joined Hyundai for the start of the 2023 season, hiring Tänak for 2024. Neuville’s world championship suggests he’s thriving under Abiteboul, but the Frenchman feels he has work to do to properly understand Tänak’s needs.
“Tonight I feel like I failed providing that platform to Ott, mainly about communication,” he said.
“I think each driver needs something which is a bit different. I don’t know what Ott wants or what he needs, which may be two different things, and that’s what we need to find out. I need to find the key of that riddle.
Abiteboul doesn't feel he understands Tänak as well as he does Neuville
“I think Thierry, what he needed is confidence, stability, making sure, you know… Thierry is someone who’s very structured, very clear about what he needs, what he wants, and I think he wanted someone who puts also structure, clarity, transparency, pragmatism, and I think, you know, I’m not the rally expert he is, but I think I’m bringing that.
“And the fact that he sees that I’m developing a plan for the team and the organization, maybe it’s not changing that much the plan, the situation, but I think it’s giving him the confidence that there is a process. And that, I think, has been maybe not a huge game changer, but something that helped a little bit in Thierry, you know, sort of stepping up a bit, being able to build an approach for the rally, for the season, you know, not just one after another.
“We sort of develop a plan for each of the things. I think that helps him. So what will help Ott? What do I need to do to help Ott? I need to find, again, the answer to that question. I have a short winter to do that.”
What I still struggle to assess is to what extent they realize the push when they are alone in their carCyril Abiteboul
Abiteboul didn’t spare Tänak of any blame or criticism though, admitting his instruction for Sunday “was simply based on completing the rally” in the P3-5 range in the Super Sunday standings.
“The target was not to go crazy for P1, and that’s clear that he was pushing,” Abiteboul added.
But the former Renault Formula 1 managing director admitted he’s still not experienced enough in rallying to know if Tänak was aware how hard he was going.
“What I still struggle to assess is to what extent they realize the push when they are alone in their car,” Abiteboul said.
“Of course, we are in a world of connectivity, of data, massively informed, so to us, watching the splits, it’s obvious. From the third split, it was obvious to me and we said, actually we were discussing with his engineer, Jamie, ‘OK, what is it that we are going to tell him after this last stage to get him to slow down and to adhere to the target that was agreed with him also?’
“And we could not really get to that point, unfortunately. But yeah, I mean, the target was clear. I’m not under the impression that he was not willing to adhere to the target, so I think it’s mainly on the execution side, not on the planning side, or it’s not on the sort of adhesion side of things.
“It’s really on the execution side of things that I want to believe that we missed something today.”
Tänak had repeatedly stated throughout the weekend that his focus was only on the manufacturers’ championship, and that any drivers’ title talk was the media “trying to make a story out of anything”.
In Hyundai’s end-of-event press release, Tänak was quoted: “It is difficult to describe what happened other than [a] complete disaster. We weren’t expecting slippery conditions in the corner and as soon as we arrived, the front washed out. It was too far off the road to recover the car.
“While we are disappointed to end the season this way, we have to recognize what a great season this has been for Thierry. He has been very consistent, managing the pressure well, and he is a worthy champion.”
Additional reporting by David Evans.
