Despite being 29 points behind his teammate Thierry Neuville, Ott Tänak is not yet ready to admit defeat in the fight for the 2024 World Rally Championship (WRC) title.
After many unsuccessful attempts, Hyundai driver Thierry Neuville is just two rallies away from achieving his ultimate goal: winning the World Rally Championship (WRC). The Belgian is the championship leader and the clear favorite going into the two races in Central Europe and Japan, but he won’t get anything handed to him – not even by his teammate Ott Tänak.
“Of course, the gap is very big, but Thierry is not safe yet,” the Estonian emphasizes his own ambitions for the second world championship title and at the same time sends a quiet challenge to his teammate.
Tänak is 29 points behind Neuville. A maximum of 60 points are still up for grabs in the last two World Championship races of the 2024 season. However, due to the current points system, which awards separate points for the Saturday, Sunday and Power Stage results, it will be difficult for Tänak to catch up on his own.
Important fight for the manufacturers title
Realistically, he must hope for a total failure by Neuville if he wants to become world champion for the second time after 2019. But he can fight, because Hyundai has so far made no move to secure the fight for the drivers’ championship by giving a team order to Neuville.
From the manufacturer’s point of view, it would not matter which of the two drivers would give Hyundai its first drivers’ title in the World Rally Championship. The team will focus primarily on winning the manufacturers’ championship in the remaining races. After the Rally Chile, the lead over their competitors from Toyota has shrunk from 35 to 17 points.
Hyundai were even lucky in this regard, because given the dominance of the GR Yaris in South America, Toyota could have reduced the gap considerably. “We were perhaps a little lucky that Seb [Ogier] had problems on Friday, but otherwise we couldn’t do anything against the Toyota. We did our best and got everything we could out of it,” says Tänak, who finished the rally in third place behind the two Toyota drivers Kalle Rovanperä and Elfyn Evans.
Neuville appeals: Please no internal fight
“The fight is definitely not over yet and we have to work hard,” says Tänak, who expects Hyundai to be more competitive than Toyota again at the two asphalt rallies at the end of the season.
Neuville, for his part, hopes that Hyundai and thus his teammate Tänak will focus on the fight for the manufacturers’ title in the season’s final stretch. “It’s important not to have an internal fight and to be ready to beat Toyota,” he says.
“Of course, there is a battle between me and Ott, and no one will take the biggest risk, but we have lost some important points against Toyota,“ the Belgian continues. ‘We need a good approach and strategy as a team to make sure we don’t lose the constructors’ championship.”
