The World Rally Championship leader acted as the day’s road-sweeper on the first full day of competition, and it clearly cost him. Tänak consistently lost time to the front-runners and also made a costly mistake during the afternoon loop.
The Estonian hit a tree on the rain-soaked Saarikas stage. Although he managed to continue, the damage began to show on the following stages as the time gaps widened.
By the end of Friday, Hyundai’s star driver was down in tenth place overall, trailing rally leader Kalle Rovanperä by over a minute.
“I was lucky, but I was never unlucky, I would say. It had nothing to do with the luck. It was just a pure a mistake in a way.”
“It just snapped on the breaking and wrong way rotation. So nothing else there.”
Despite the impact, Tänak pushed hard to finish the Saarikas stage. However, on the next stages, he had to back off.
“We had quite a bit damage. We obviously damaged the cooling system and we didn’t have the cooling fans. That’s why we could never stop, we always had to keep driving. The engine was quite hot,” Tänak explained.
Only one top-class Rally1 driver, M-Sport Ford’s Grégoire Munster, ended the day behind Tänak. That means the Estonian will face a tough road again on Saturday, running second on the stages — not ideal for stage conditions.
“Sounds a lot better than today,” Tänak quipped bluntly.
Rally Finland continues on Saturday with eight special stages on the schedule.
