Hyundai’s WRC team announced at the time that Estonian Ott Tänak would be joining the Korean manufacturer on a multi-year deal.
At first glance, there was nothing unusual about the news. Drivers do change teams. But at that moment, Tänak’s move to Hyundai was something special. The Estonian had just won his first world title with Toyota. And now he was switching teams immediately.
The situation could be compared to Red Bull’s F1 star Max Verstappen moving to Mercedes straight after winning his first championship.
There was plenty of speculation around Tänak’s bombshell transfer, but now Hyundai’s then team principal Andrea Adamo has finally told the story of how it all happened.
“The first thing that you need to win is to have all the best possible people,” Adamo said on the WRC Backstories podcast.
“I always tried to study what was the key factors of my previous experience that allowed us to win. And it was clear to me that you have to have the best drivers. In my opinion [then] it was Ott and someone can say Sébastien Ogier, but then Stellantis [Citroën] was still involved, and his contract was ongoing so it would have cost me a lot,” Adamo continued.
Tänak, on the other hand, was about to become a free agent. Talks began already in summer 2019.
“But Ott was coming to the end of his contract [at Toyota] and, to tell you the truth, the first time we spoke a bit was in 2019 at Sardinia,” Adamo revealed.
At that year’s Rally Sardinia, Tänak suffered heartbreaking misfortune when a technical fault robbed him of what looked like a certain victory. Dani Sordo eventually won the rally. This moment also became a turning point in Hyundai’s contract talks.
“I remember clearly walking after the parc fermé and I saw him [Ott] very down and I saw this as the moment where I should start to jump in,” Adamo said.
“I remember that we started to speak with Markko Märtin who was his manager in those days. We met up a bit and we had a nice evening in Germany after the rally [in August]. And then things moved on. But you have to find the moment to put the feet in the door. I saw the moment everyone was partying [after Sordo took the win in Sardinia]. I let them [my people] party, they deserved to party. I don’t remember at all [what Ott said] but he didn’t send me away,” Adamo recalled.
Although Tänak’s Hyundai deal was not announced until the end of the year, the agreement was actually reached in September. Getting to that point, however, was anything but easy.
“Difficult, it was enormously difficult – but not with Ott, with Markko. I think I exchanged 168 Excel files with Markko about the contract,” Adamo laughed.
“But at the end I told him [Markko], you are now going to sign the model car of his win in Finland 2003 I had because you make me crazy. Instead, he bought me a 1:43 model car with a nice casing and wrote something, and this is a nice memory,” Adamo remembered.
Ott Tänak in Rally Sardinia in 2020. Photo: Hyundai Motorsport GmbH
By September the matter was finalised.
“In Turkey, I remember during the rally [it was agreed], that was a tough rally for us, I was behind our service with my laptop on my knee checking what was being said because I could not speak about this in the middle of the office where everyone was able to hear. And then on the Monday after we signed the deal basically with Ott,” Adamo said.
Hyundai’s announcement was also dramatic in its own way. The team revealed Tänak’s signing just days after he had clinched his first world championship with Toyota in Spain.
Tänak still drives for Hyundai today – although in 2023 he spent one season at M-Sport. The Estonian has won a total of eight rallies with Hyundai, but he has not yet added a second world title.
And it looks set to remain just a dream this time as well. Tänak is already 43 points behind Toyota’s Sébastien Ogier, who leads the championship, with only three rounds left in the season.
