Ott Tänak will be able to make up for any high-speed shortcomings his Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC might have when it comes to Rally Estonia next month – that’s the verdict of the World Rally Champion’s former technical director at Toyota.
Fowler’s Toyota Yaris WRC has dominated its native Rally Finland by winning the last three Jyväskylä-based events on the bounce, two of which were by Tänak in 2018 and ’19.
Despite Hyundai having failed to trouble the Finland podium since its return to the WRC in 2014, Fowler is sure its new man will be quick enough to turn that fast-rally form around on the similarly quick Estonian roads.
“Ott should be confident, because, if he’s got 97% of the car we’ve got, his road position [fifth on the road] should give him the extra 3%,” Fowler told DirtFish.
“He’s right to be confident and he should win it.
“We’ve got a test coming [in Estonia] this month and we are relatively confident in what we can do on this kind of rally.
”I think the biggest problem for us is going to be the road position because Séb [Ogier] and Elfyn [Evans] are going to be at the front.”
M-Sport team principal Richard Millener echoed those sentiments and said Tänak’s home advantage would be measurable.
“Ott has a very good chance of winning in Estonia,” he said.
“When you’re at your home event, you know the roads, you know what the weather is going to be in the next couple of hours and how the car will react if the roads start to break up.
“With home support, no matter what we’re allowed in terms of spectators, he would have to be one of the favourites.
“It might not be quite as high-speed as it was last year – and that’s a good thing, you don’t want a completely flat-out rally, but I think Ott’s confidence will give him that extra edge at home.”
Tänak himself sparked this debate when he told DirtFish the Hyundai team had taken a good step forward on fast gravel, following his maiden win in a i20 Coupe WRC on the Viru Rally in Estonia at the start of July.
“You learn things when you are testing,” Tänak told DirtFish following that win.
“But all the time you are using the same piece of road, so you definitely learn more when you are competing. I think we learned quite a lot.
“You get so many different conditions which are a bit unexpected when you are on a rally.
“We’ve had some really good feedback from the rally and now we have set some new targets for where we need to improve the car.
“I have the belief in my team that they can do the job. I think compared with where Hyundai was in Finland last year to where we are now, already we have done quite a lot of work.
“I know [Hyundai] struggled a bit on these kind of roads, but the car I drove before this one worked well on these roads – so that has given me a bit of a benchmark.”
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Asked if he thought the step in pace would be enough to beat Toyota, Tänak added: “We’ll see when the rally comes where we are. We know the other teams, they have been working and coming with some news tricks of their own.
“You never know exactly what to expect. But the feeling from the testing and the rally is good for me.
“Is it enough? Ultimately, if you win the championship then you know you achieved your targets.”
Tänak’s Hyundai team-mate Thierry Neuville has neither won in Finland or claimed the WRC title, but he’s also optimistic for Estonia despite potential travel restrictions as a result of increasing COVID-19 cases.
“I’m pretty confident that, as Elfyn already mentioned, that the fight will be intense for all the manufacturers and everybody will be fast,” Neuville said on DirtFish Debates.
“Who will have the upper hand, we don’t know now, what I know is that Ott has driven the rally last year and definitely going to try our team there as well prepared as possible with the information we have from previous years.
“I have been there in 2012 last time. I can barely remember the stages, a bit more the afterparty, which was very intense as well!
“But I’m looking forward to it. It’s basically a new rally for me from that perspective and I’m going to try to do as well as I can.
“I think Ott definitely has very good chances, and Elfyn as well with the experience from previous years, but we are not giving up before we have started.”
