Ott Tanak says that his job with Hyundai remained unfinished when he joined the team four years ago and admits that the car is a bit different to what the i20N he drove in 2022.
The Estonian driver left Toyota and joined Hyundai Motorsport in 2022 with the view of his claiming his second title in World Rally Championship. However, he was not able to achieve that and decided to terminate prematurely his contract with the Alzenau-based team at the end of 2022 due to the fact that there were some problems to his cooperation with the Hyundai's management and his teammate Thierry Neuville. He reached an agreement with M-Sport Ford for 2023, but his season was far from perfect as the Puma was not reliable and was behind in terms of the development compared to the Yaris and the i20N. In addition to that, the British squad did not offer him a contract extension, thus Tanak confirmed at the end of Rally Chile that he will get behind the wheel of the i20N again as he was impressed by Hyundai's steps in 2023 considering the work of Cyril Abiteboul and Francois-Xavier Demaison and the car improvement.
"The company has been working quite a lot to build up the new structure and to be ready to be competitive in the championship", Tanak said.
"Already last year we saw some quite big steps with the new team principal and a technical director and some of the stuff so the intention is clearly there.
"The car isn’t much different from the end of 2022 – it’s pretty similar in many aspects.
"There’s been some fine-tuning in the meantime.
"The feeling was quite good since the beginning – but then we only did one day of testing and we haven’t seen too much yet.
"We need to do some rallies first to get feedback.
"It’s the start of the season, so everything is achievable.
"The target is to win everything that is possible.
"How it’s going to work out?
"We’ll see through the season – it’s a long year.
"There is business which is not finished, we will fight for that business".
Source: wrc.com
Photo Credits: M-Sport
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