So far, the Central European Rally has followed a similar pattern to Tänak’s season overall. He hasn’t been able to hit peak performance, but currently sits in third place.
“Difficult to say. It feels like a big struggle, but for sure, let’s say the confidence isn’t there yet,” Tänak summed up his morning loop.
“The balance probably isn’t the strongest point, especially with changing conditions. But at least this morning, we had a good advantage with the road position, for sure. The road was developing a lot with each car, so we tried to make the most of it,” Tänak added.
Tänak started the morning loop as the second car, right behind his teammate Thierry Neuville, who leads the championship. It was a decent starting position for the Estonian.
“I could still see something. I understood that the guys behind already had quite bad conditions, I guess I need to be happy with where I am,” Tänak said.
Tänak is now 6.3 seconds behind rally leader Neuville. It’s not an insurmountable gap.
“We still need to improve a bit. We’re not far away, but we could have a bit more pace. So let’s see. In the forest this morning, we were okay,” Tänak anticipated.
Neuville is chasing his first-ever drivers’ world championship in Central Europe, but there’s also a lot at stake in the manufacturers’ championship. Hyundai’s task was made harder when Andreas Mikkelsen crashed out.
“For sure, we can discuss, but we still can’t give everything away to Toyota. So we need to keep going,” Tänak revealed his plan.
