I first met Steve [Rimmer, DirtFish owner] in 2010 when I was at Goodwood Festival of Speed with Markko [Märtin]. I was looking at all of these cars from the time before in the rallying and Steve asked if I would like to drive his MG.
Straightaway I knew he was a good guy!
It’s been a long break since I worked with Steve and DirtFish and a lot has happened in the last 10 years, but I’m very happy to be back together again.
DirtFish is a really interesting company. It’s a rally school in Seattle, but as you can see from looking around here at DirtFish.com, it’s growing quickly. This is exciting time for the sport – especially in North America.
It’s always easiest to stay where you are, but if you want to move forward and achieve something in the future then you have to moveOtt Tänak
And an exciting time for me. I think many people were asking at the end of last season why I moved from the team where I won the title.
It’s always easiest to stay where you are, but if you want to move forward and achieve something in the future then you have to move. I believe this was the right way to do this to stay competitive.
From when I first met Andrea [Adamo, Hyundai Motorsport director] I thought he was a good guy. He’s direct and, for me, he’s easy to work with. I like this.
We could see last year, Hyundai was closing in on the Toyota pretty quickly, so I was interested to drive the car for the first time to see what the i20 was like. It’s good. From my first test in Monte, I was comfortable in the car and the feeling was nice. That came more in the second test.
The car is driving easily – that’s what you need in the mountains for Monte Carlo – and there is good pace from the car. I feel immediately this is a good place to be.
I know there’s going to be a lot of talk in the media about me and Thierry [Neuville]. It’s going to be a good fight this year, but it’s not going to be the only fight – we have to think to Séb [Ogier]. I know what he has for this season and I know he can be hard to beat, like always.
But Andrea made a good team and he’s the guy we will listen to.
One thing I think we know for sure, especially if you watched Hyundai’s videos for the start of the season, this isn’t going to be a boring year!
