M-Sport’s Ott Tänak will contest the Otepää Rally in Estonia as pre-event preparation for the second World Rally Championship event, Rally Sweden.
Rally1 drivers are beginning to look at national rallies ahead of WRC events as ways to test and acclimatize to the expected conditions, as testing regulations have been tightened for 2023.
Each manufacturer team now has just 21 allocated days of testing, with a maximum of seven days per driver for a three-car team, unlike last year where each manufacturer got one test day for every European event of the season.
In the Monte Carlo Rally service park on Sunday, M-Sport managing director Malcolm Wilson was asked by DirtFish if Tänak was going to enter Otepää Rally.
Wilson replied: “That’s probably going to happen, yeah.”
Hyundai and Toyota have both entered Esapekka Lappi and Takamoto Katsuta respectively into Finland’s Kuopio Rally, and on the same weekend Tänak will compete on the Estonian championship’s season-opener.
Otepää is an event he – and then team-mate Thierry Neuville – last contested in 2021 with Hyundai ahead of Arctic Rally Finland.
