Ott Tanak has explained the crash he described as a “proper disaster” that handed team-mate Thierry Neuville the World Rally Championship crown and dented Hyundai’s manufacturers’ title bid.
Tanak started Sunday with a commanding 38 second rally lead over Toyota’s Elfyn Evans but his Rally Japan victory bid unravelled in the most spectacular fashion on stage 17.
The 2019 world champion needed to win the rally to keep his slim title hopes and help Hyundai hold off Toyota in the manufacturers’ championship.
As it stood, if Tanak won the rally Neuville needed to pick up two points from Sunday’s five stage to lift the drivers’ title.
However, a slippery corner in stage 17 (Nukata) caught out Tanak resulting in a heavy impact that has forced him to retire and as a result lost the top point finishe accrued on Saturday, meaning Hyundai and Toyota are level on points heading into the final two stages.
The corner proved to be particularly tricky as former Formula 1 driver Heikki Kovalainen also suffered a heavy crash after misguiding the right hander.
“It is a proper disaster there are no other words, it is difficult to describe,” said a dejected Tanak.
“Somehow I didn’t expect any slippy conditions in this corner and somehow when we immediately hit he corner the front washed out and obviously it went too far off the road to recover.”
When asked about how his incident has affected Hyundai’s manufacturers’ title bid, he added: “To be honest it is a complete f*** up and it shouldn’t have happened.”
Reflecting on the fact that his team-mate Neuville has now clinched a amain WRC title, he said: “It is a great season for him for sure, very consistent and very well managed.”
Evans leads the rally by 1m32.2s ahead of team-mate Sebastien Ogier with M-Sport’s Adrien Fourmaux in third.
However, Hyundai leads the Super Sunday standings with Neuville leading team-mate Andreas Mikkelsen by 1.3s, Ogier, 8.4s adrift in third and Evans fourth [+10.1s].
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