Ott Tänak has revealed he was carrying a water pump problem throughout Friday’s leg of Rally of Portugal, and only sterling work from M-Sport’s mechanics in the remote tire fitting zone kept him in the rally.
Tänak had a strong start to the fifth round of this year’s World Rally Championship, overhauling team-mate Pierre-Louis Loubet to lead the event after stage two.
He maintained that lead into the remote tire fitting zone at Arganil that punctuated Friday’s two loops instead of a midday service, but then lost it on the first stage of the afternoon when his front-right tire worked its way off the rim.
That dumped Tänak to seventh in one fell swoop which later became sixth when Elfyn Evans crashed out on the penultimate stage.
But arriving back at the service park in Porto, Tänak revealed his “main issue” of the day was not that tire trouble, but rather a broken water pump which had affected his morning too.
“Actually, the main issue started this morning on the second stage and was getting worse on the third one,” Tänak told DirtFish.
“We were getting some water pump issues, but still on the tire fitting [zone] the mechanics did a bit of magic and some good massage to the water pump.
“So we never expected to survive, but actually it survived all afternoon. So did quite well but yeah obviously the main issues this afternoon were the punctures.
“We got one quite early on the stage and then we damaged the second one as well so we basically had no spare tires. We just had to come through, we couldn’t really risk anything anymore.”
Given the tire fitting zone was half the length of a regular service at 15 minutes, and mechanics could only do so much without the same access to parts, M-Sport did an incredible job to keep Tänak in the running.
Work was similarly impressive on Loubet’s car as well, as he arrived into the tire fitting zone having just put out a fire – believed to be related to the exhaust – at the end of the third stage.
At the end of Friday’s final superspecial stage, Loubet was quick to pay tribute to his mechanics too.
“Big thanks to the mechanics, on Sunday night for sure they will have some free beer!” he smiled.
“One of them was one of my mechanics when I was in R5 and he also saved the day in Tour de Corse 2016, I remember, so it’s a nice story.
“Thanks to them they did a great job.”
Loubet heads into Saturday fourth overall, 0.9s seconds shy of Thierry Neuville’s third place but equally just 0.4s ahead of Esappeka Lappi.
