The Hyundai driver was the first to suffer a hybrid unit failure at February’s Rally Sweden, which under the sporting regulations, forced the team to retire the car on safety grounds.
Tanak was fighting for the lead of the rally when a red warning light appeared on the Compact Dynamics control unit, while his i20 was still operational.
In addition to the retirement, a 10 minute time penalty was issued, effectively ending any hopes of top 10 finish upon rejoining the event under restart rules the following day.
Since Sweden the WRC and the FIA has tweaked the regulations, reducing the penalty for a similar hybrid issue to two minutes per every stage missed, following calls from Hyundai, Toyota and M-Sport Ford.
If this new penalty was applied in Sweden, Tanak would have been able to fight for sixth position – salvaging crucial points.
Speaking ahead of this weekend’s Rally Croatia, where the new rules will make their debut, the 2019 world champion feels the crux of the issue has still not been addressed.
“The penalties have changed but obviously the issue is somewhere else,” said Tanak, who sits 41 points adrift of championship leader Kalle Rovanpera.
“The hybrid [systems] are not meant for rallying at the moment and I guess this is the topic we should look into not the penalties.
“If you get a penalty, it is still something that the manufacturers or teams can’t do anything differently, so it is not in our control, somebody else is controlling. The penalties make no difference.
“Rallying is a tough sport. If you are running these hybrid boxes they need to be meant for rallying. At the moment for sure they are not. They need to focus on improving these boxes so we can do a rally with them.
“My view is that we are focussing in the very wrong place. The guys are focussing on when we get the red flag but the focus should be that we don’t get the red flag.
“It is a funny situation as I had to retire in Sweden and still now they [Compact…
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