Ott Tanak believes that the performance of Puma in the next two events will show where M-Sport Ford is in comparison with Hyundai and Toyota while he admits that he will increase his game since this year's championship enters to the second half of 2023.
The 2019 WRC Champion is fourth overall on drivers' standings despite the fact that he has equal points with Sebastien Ogier and is just one point behind the second Elfyn Evans. So far this season, Tanak has won once at Rally Sweden five months ago while he has only one podium finish (2nd place at Croatia Rally). However, he faced many problems with his Puma, such as a turbo issue on the opening stage of Friday at Rally Mexico, but generally he is lacking pace during the weekends and this can be proved by the number of his stage wins which is 13.
To get well-prepared for his home event, M-Sport Ford gave him the chance to test the Puma in Estonia, but also to compete in Louna-Eesti Ralli, which is a round of the Estonian championship, and managed to be victorious there as he finished ahead of Teemu Suninen who participated with the Hyundai i20N Rally1.
"We've had some quite intense preparations; we did a pre-event test and then a small event, so it's been a big effort to make it as good as possible for Estonia", Tanak said.
"Obviously, the next two events are purely about performance, so we're putting everything into it and we'll find out how close we get to the others.
"Now we are going into the second half of the season we're definitely not letting the championship go, so we feel like we need to increase our game and put everything in.
"It's going to be a short turnaround to Finland, so if something isn't quite working in Estonia the week in between will be flat out, but hopefully in Estonia we will be on a good level already".
Photo Credits: M-Sport
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