Ott Tanak has conceded that M-Sport faces “a pretty big task” to close the gap on World Rally Championship rivals Toyota and Hyundai, but is confident that this can be achieved.
The Estonian made steady progress in extracting speed from the Ford Puma package on his first competitive outing in the car at Monte Carlo, but ultimately failed to rise to a challenge at the sharp end.
While hampered by an electrical issue on Thursday, followed by intermittent power steering on Saturday, the 35-year-old got a glimpse of the potential of the Tanak/M-Sport package on Sunday’s Power Stage, where the 35-year-old finished 0, 6 seconds away from winning the stage.
Tanak left Monte Carlo with 14 points after finishing fifth, 2:34.9s behind rally winner Sebastien Ogier of Toyota.
“It was still a good weekend overall,” Tanak told Motorsport.com. “We were able to learn a lot and also collected some good kilometers. Certainly there are things we need to improve, we need to be more consistent and find some speed, but I believe there are ways to achieve that.
“The Power Stage definitely showed that it could be possible to be competitive with this car, but we just need to find a way and a better balance so that we can go through the whole stage loop like this, because at the moment we can’t do that for that to keep tires alive for this distance.
“There’s a lot of things we need to do and we’re behind at the moment and there’s a pretty big job to do. If there is a will, there will be a way.”
Ott Tanak, Martin Jarveoja, M-Sport Ford World Rally Team Ford Puma Rally1
Photo by: M-Sport
After failing to repeat Sebastien Loeb’s fairytale victory at Monte Carlo last year, team boss Richard Millener doesn’t believe a knee-jerk reaction is needed to improve the car.
“I think last year there was an added challenge that people hadn’t driven these cars a lot, so the playing field leveled out,” he told Motorsport.com.
“I don’t think the car isn’t better or not as good [as last year]. I think there are a couple of factors, the conditions were more difficult [last year] and this was effectively a full throttle rally on tarmac. If you’re not 100% comfortable in the car, you’re going to have problems, and Ott only had a day and a bit of time in the car.
“The good thing is that Ott hasn’t mentioned anything about performance, it’s not that the car has 25hp less, he wants to develop it more in his style to debrief after the event. It is important that you do not react knee-jerk.”
Sister points-scorer Pierre-Louis Loubet with Puma rode up to seventh place before a failure on Friday triggered a power steering failure. The Frenchman then retired on Saturday after a crash on stage 9.
He returned on Sunday before retiring after a water leak fixed on a stretch of road meant the 25-year-old ran out of time to make the next stage.
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