Hyundai Motorsport director Andrea Adamo has told DirtFish he is confident the steering issue which forced Ott Tänak off the road was a one-off and won’t be a problem on the i20 Coupe WRCs running one-two ahead of Rally Turkey’s final day.
What Adamo wasn’t willing to share was the precise nature of the problem which cost the Rally Estonia winner his chance at back-to-back wins.
“We had a steering issue,” he told DirtFish. “I’m not telling you what caused it.”
Further questioning drew a testy response from the Italian, who added: “We can go ahead with this, but you know from one year and a half that I will never say [what the problem is], so if you want we can go ahead with this game until tomorrow morning.”
Asked if he was concerned about the other cars or if he’d seen the issue in testing, Adamo said: “No. It has to be a one-off.
“When some of my people, when we have a problem like this, I’m not here to do statistics, I’m here to win championships. I don’t need to have the problem many times before to react or to get upset; we’re not here to try to break the car, we’re here to try to win. It never happened before, but it should never have happened today.”
Despite Thierry Neuville leading for Hyundai with Sébastien Loeb joint second, Adamo admitted the Tänak incident remained at the forefront of his mind.
“This retirement put a shadow on the day,” he said. “But to be leading and somehow second – even if it’s an equal time – is putting some nice prospects for tomorrow. What is good is that Thierry has improved along the day, the car has been improved and we modified many things. We have to understand that we have to get 100% from what we have.”
Asked to describe Loeb’s effort, he concluded: “Amazing. For tomorrow, we have to see what will happen after the first loop. I don’t know that I can ask Loeb to stay on equal time all day with Ogier.”
