In a week where motorsport’s collected eye will be on the Melbourne suburbs and Albert Park, Ott Tänak has suggested looking outside of the zoo.
Since departing the service park at the end of last season, the 2019 World Rally champion has had time to reflect and think on the sport he loves. He’s now sure of two things: he agrees with Lorenzo Bertelli and if you want to see lions in the wild, rallying’s the way forwards.
Tänak has never been shy of an opinion. While he was embroiled in the battle for another world title, his focus remained, quite rightly, on winning the next event. Now he can see a bigger picture. As the sport moves towards a new rule set and a new promoter, the Estonian has a clear view – and it’s one shared with Bertelli.
“I must say, this interview you did with Lorenzo [Bertelli] was very good,” Tänak told DirtFish. “I fully agree with what he’s saying. Firstly, we hope that there is going to be some change, but, secondly, it’s exactly the way Lorenzo was explaining: there needs to be this one guy with the vision, with a clear drive to make it happen.
“Like we are having at the moment, yes, there might be good people, but all of them [are] doing their own thing and there is nobody driving the system and, like we could see, there is no outcome. It’s now up to the current promoter and also the FIA that if they are selling it, the promoter, that it goes to the right hands where there is this drive and where there is this vision to make it happen.
WRC needs a leader with a vision, says Tänak
“If you just put it in another investor with the same setup, then obviously the outcome will be also the same.
“It needs to be a very clear drive. I mean, F1, we always want to compare to F1, but F1 is a different sport. It’s a red carpet and it’s all clean. Rally is in the forest. F1 is like you go in the zoo to look at the lion in the cage, but rallying is like you go in the forest and see the lion in the wild, so it’s completely different.
“[In rallying] there is no cage, you know, it’s different sport. It’s much wilder and it definitely needs a character who has the self-confidence, who has the vision, and who has also this kind of energy to make it happen.”
Having talked to talk so eloquently, could Tänak do the job?
“No, it’s not for me. But, I mean, it’s like Max Verstappen said as well, this sport (rallying) is too crazy. He’s probably one of the best drivers in the world, but he wouldn’t do it because it’s far too risky and it’s crazy what they are doing there…
“Anyhow, in the end we shouldn’t compare ourselves too much to F1 because obviously F1 has always been the king of the motorsport. It’s the most expensive and it’s fancy and it’s also in the cage, so it’s easier to make it happen somehow.
“They’ve done an amazing job and they have the guy leading it [Stefano Domenicali, Formula 1, CEO], he’s a proper guy. He’s a very good catch for F1 and he’s definitely done a lot of good. We shouldn’t look at what they are doing. Our sport is completely different, so definitely it needs a very different approach – but every single element is there to make it very effective as well, so we just need to do our own job.”
Having driven professionally for much of the last 15 years, winning the world title and 22 rounds of the world championship, Tänak understands what’s needed to succeed.
“When you want to make the car fly, it’s a 24/7 job for the team, for the engineers, the technicians,” he said. “There are no weekends, no evenings, no holidays, this is how it is. And it’s the same for the promoter: if they want to make the sport fly, it needs to be the same approach. There is no other way.
“If you want to be better than the other sport, you need to work more than the other sport. That’s the way it works. It just means that it needs bigger effort to beat MotoGP or something like this. I mean, we see in America, NASCAR, IndyCars, they are all mega. It’s definitely possible, it’s just how much effort you put in.”
