Arguably the best news for Tänak was the feeling for the future.

“For myself,” he said, “I still need to make it work – but at least I see it’s not too far away. It’s more things we need to prepare better for [the next Tarmac event in] Croatia and for sure it was a good experience this weekend to do the mileage and understand the car.



“The car is definitely competitive. We will still have quite a few topics to discuss where I’d like to believe we can still improve quite a bit, but altogether I guess already, as a base, the job they’ve done last year is good. The car has been fine-tuned and it’s in a good window.”

The job Tänak has now is to clean that window to make it more useable, to make the car faster and faster. Being in the set-up ballpark is great, but those final details and percentages are where the stage wins, rally wins and championship wins come from.

He knows that. “If you are in a better window and more confident, you can start pushing a bit as well.”

https://dirtfish.com/rally/wrc/why-t...-tricky-monte/