Tanak felt like the cards were not in his favor on the first two days of Rally Latvia

Ott Tanak says that the first two days of Rally Latvia were against him and did not believe that his fortune would overturn, but he is happy with his perfomance on Sunday and promises that he will be at full attack in Finland in two weeks.

The Estonian driver was starting third on the road on Friday and was fourth overall despite his wrong strategy in Stage 6 and his problems with the brakes in Stage 7. Despite the fact that he fixed the brake issues for Stage 8, he dropped to sixth place overall before starting the penultimate day of Rally Latvia. On Saturday morning, he managed to get two places and to pass Adrien Fourmaux and Takamoto Katsuta on the classification. On the second loop of Saturday, he was chasing Martins Sesks for the third place until a strange incident occurred in Stage 14 where he had to stop when an advertising arch collapsed on his i20N after Elfyn Evans's contact with it. The organizers of Rally Latvia gave to him a notional time for SS14, but his i20N was damaged on the front while his day did not end in a positive way due to the fact that the driveshaft or the gearbox was broken after a landing and had to hit a hay bale to make his car stopped. Tanak bounced back on Sunday by setting the fastest times on the final three stages of the rally and finishing at the lowest place of the podium after Sesks's problems with his Puma in Powerstage while he scored twelve points yesterday due to the fact that he was the top driver on the SuperSunday standings and on the Powerstage times. After the end of Rally Latvia, Tanak stole Elfyn Evans's second place on the championship and is just eight points behind the championship leader Thierry Neuville.

"We can at least say Sunday was a good day", Tanak said. 

"In the end, Saturday was not too bad pace wise. 

"We managed to get back into a rhythm after a difficult Friday, where we definitely had the wrong tyre choice and were struggling with the set up. 

"Losing the brakes on Friday’s final stage meant we didn’t have a good starting position on Saturday, so it felt like the cards were not in our favour, but we have managed to take the absolute maximum from Sunday. 

"Finland is next, and one of my favourite events – those roads are made for rallies. 

"Toyota will be very fast again but we will give it our all – we are always full attack".

Photo Credits: Hyundai