Ott Tänak - Future champion?

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Nothing would surprise me in this sport. Tanak has earned well since he left M-Sport and I'm sure he'd now prefer to have more Titles than even more money...

[Fast Eddie WRC]

[mknight]

I totally wouldn't be surprised if there are some text messages being sent between Wilson and Tanak to see what is possible. Either one of them has reasons to start it.

[MentalParadox]

Yep... M-Sport has a great car but only average drivers, Tänak is a great driver but with an average car. And they already know each other. It's a match made in Heaven.

[MentalParadox]

Guys don't lose your minds now. At M-Sport he would not get the salary he needs or wants. You need to look now at the so called bigger picture as he is a family man.

Sent from my DN2103 using Tapatalk

How many millions does one "need" to raise a family? Anyway, if I was a millionaire sportsman hungry for another title, I'd choose glory over money.

[cali]

How many millions does one "need" to raise a family? Anyway, if I was a millionaire sportsman hungry for another title, I'd choose glory over money.

What I've heard they're thinking already ahead when the career stops and making business decisions. They (together with Märtin) bought quite big chunk of property on the seaside of Tallinn which is about the most expensive place you can have today.

But this is what I've heard so it could be just stupid rumours although the source is quite believable

[Danny0405]

I don’t think renewing with Hyundai can be viewed as a big mistake at the time it was done:
Yeah, we could think M-Sport would make a good car from a technical point of view (2017 is the better example) but the Covid-related financial drought was a certain level of uncertainty for them about their ability to produce an even more expensive car (also having a rookie as development driver even if Matthew Wilson is a very good technical driver and was involved). Moreover, we know M-Sport doesn’t have a big development margin after 6 months or 1 year. So M-Sport was also a risk and their 2021 results were clearly weak compared with 2016 (in 2016, Ostberg could have been 2nd in championship at mid-season without an engine failure in Sardinia). As we said for shares, the past performance is not a prediction of future results.

In addition to that, the Hyundai was clearly the 2nd best car in 2017 from the beginning and quite close from the M-Sport, with more development margin also and Neuville was clearly in championship contention at that time. Don’t forget Neuville was dominant in the two first rallies in 2017 before having some issues (more mistakes than technical). So they should know how to adapt to new regulations.

So, if you add that Hyundai pays much more, it is clearly a logical choice. The fact that Tanak doesn’t adapt to the former i20 is not totally relevant because it was a car already designed whereas, for 2022, he could participate to the development.

That being said, I am worried for Tanak; I was already skeptical that his driving style could suit this new regulation and with a difficult car from the beginning, I don’t know if he has enough fighting spirit when we saw last year; yeah, Tanak did some comebacks in the past but, at a certain age and when you already have a title, it can be more difficult.
I’m less worried about Neuville that seems still hungry and less blockhead so if the Hyundai gets better enough (even slower than Toyota or M-Sport), he can be dangerous in the WDC.

[EstWRC]

i dont think we can say based on one rally that if it suits him or not.

look how he struggled with the previous gen. i20 on tarmac, especially compared to Neuville but this weekend when everything was more or less working for both of them, they both showed basically exactly the same speed (previous years Thierry was comfortably faster), which is a huge step forward cause i consider Thierry a better tarmac driver than Ott, at least definitely on Monte. Monte is Otts weakest rally IMO, not only based on the previous 3 years results but his speed hasnt never been on Monte as good as on other events.

based on the comments he seemed to feel more comfortable than Thierry with the car.

we will see as the season progresses.

[henzo]

Yes, t its like on dirt/snow.the ford was good and mostly problem free on tarmac - but we have yet to see wha
We know that tänak struggled with i20 on tarmac previous seasons, and the i20 struggled with tänak on dirt.
I too in my wet dreams see Tänak in msport again, but i dont think its happening this season, sadly.
Also, in estonian media hyundai said that what aided in the decision of tänak retiring from MC was that they could plant a new engine to his car prior to sweden that way. Otherwise they are limited to 2 engines er season, this way it doesnt count towards the 2.

[AnttiL]

Lasse Lampi was interviewed by Kristian Sohlberg on his twitch channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giZ7...istianSohlberg

For background: In addition to his own driving career, Lampi was working as a test engineer with Audi in the group B days, with Mitsubishi from Galant to Lancer, then also working with Juho Hänninen at Skoda with S2000 cars and finally throughout Toyota's WRC project until he now retired.

Sohlberg asked his views on various drivers and Tänak was one of them. Lampi said:

- Tänak is difficult, especially towards engineers and opinions which are not his
- Tänak is not a team player, always playing into his own bag
- It would have been challenging to find an engineer [to work with Tänak], had Tänak continued [in 2020]
- Lampi got along with Tänak but they had a couple of discussions with "with larger letters"
- Lampi doesn't believe Tänak will be a champion in 2022 because he's been so lost lately, wonders whether it's because of having too tough teammate

1:44:22 into the interview