photo by WRC
Hyundai star Ott Tänak has continued his fine run of FIA World Rally Championship form, winning Thursday morning’s shakedown at ORLEN 80th Rally Poland in his i20 N Rally1.
The Estonian driver starts this seventh round of the 2024 series off the back of a victory in Italy last time out. Tipped by fans as the favourite for glory on Poland’s super-fast gravel roads, Tänak was 1.1sec quicker than his closest challenger, team-mate Thierry Neuville, in the Lubiewo warm-up.
Tänak has a score to settle as Rally Poland, based out of Mikołajki, returns to the championship following a seven-year hiatus. A puncture robbed him of what would have been his maiden victory in the closing stages of the 2016 edition.
“I like this rally a lot, but I’ve never been able to win it,” he said. “It’s a target I’d like to fight for but let’s see for the weekend.
“[It will be a] very demanding rally going forwards, very high speed. We hope that we have done a good recce – that’s the crucial part here.”
Championship leader Neuville provided plenty of entertainment for the fans when he ran slightly wide on his opening shakedown run, clipping a bale with the rear corner of his Hyundai and picking up some cosmetic damage. At close of running, he headed third-placed M-Sport Ford Puma driver Adrien Fourmaux by 0.7sec.
2016 Poland winner Andreas Mikkelsen was fourth in another Hyundai, just two-tenths of a second ahead of top-level debutant Mārtiņš Sesks. Sesks, who hails from Latvia, is driving a non-hybrid Puma and posted the fifth-best time on his fourth attempt of the stage.
Elfyn Evans was second after his first shakedown run but fell to sixth by the end of the session. Behind him was Toyota GR Yaris colleague Kalle Rovanperä, starting this event after frantic preparations having been flown in to replace Sébastien Ogier at the final hour.
“Yesterday we did 14 hours of recce,” Rovanperä revealed. “It’s not easy, our testing was the 5 kilometres we did just now. Let’s see if we can help the team a bit and impress the fans.”
Eighth went the way of Toyota star Takamoto Katsuta while Grégoire Munster ended ninth.
Crews face a super special later this evening to kick off the action. SS1, Mikołajki Arena 1.
material sourced from wrc.com
