Ott Tänak has said that he suffered with many issues on Saturday’s afternoon loop of Croatia Rally.
Tänak had been making inroads on Elfyn Evans’ lead on the first two stages of Saturday afternoon, reducing the lead from 22.6 seconds down to 12.5s.
But when the final two stages got going, it was clear Tänak was suffering with a problem, notably the lack of a working handbrake, and Evans managed to extend his lead again to 25.4s.
And when the M-Sport driver did make it back to service on Saturday evening, he confirmed there were several problems with his Puma Rally1 car.
“Yeah, it seems like it is quite many things and different things. What exactly, difficult to say,” Tänak explained to DirtFish.
“First some hydraulic problem probably with the handbrake, but it was not really hampering the last stage.
“We had some chassis things. But yeah let’s see, quite a few things we have at the moment.
“So definitely good to be here.”
Although Evans managed to extend his overall lead to Tänak on Saturday’s final two stages, he wasn’t overly happy with his performance either.
“Yeah, obviously we’ve managed today with no mistakes, not really any major time lost through issues,” the Toyota driver said. “But obviously not super happy with my afternoon.
“But obviously it’s a big part of the game to also stay on the road for one and obviously stay out of trouble.”
But while Evans couldn’t completely put a finger on his issues, or why his pace was so good in the final two stages, he believes confidence definitely played a part.
“I can’t really answer you,” he explained.
“We still need to study it a bit.
“I really struggled actually for confidence, especially in that long one. Afterwards it wasn’t so bad.”
