The M-Sport-Ford driver heads to the WRC’s famous fast gravel rally with the envious record of three wins in his last four outings in Finland, including a heroic drive to defeat home hero Kalle Rovanpera last year.
Tanak is in need of a strong result to boost his WRC title aspirations after a five-minute engine change penalty robbed the Estonian of a chance to claim a strong points haul at his home round two weeks ago.
However, the 2019 world champion is expecting to face a tough ask to repeat his Rally Finland form of 12 months ago when he took an underperforming Hyundai to victory. Now driving for M-Sport, Tanak says the Ford squad is currently behind its Toyota and Hyundai rivals.
“At the moment, the speed deficit [to Toyota and Hyundai] is quite big and obviously last year the case was different,” Tanak told Autosport.
“In Finland, you really need a perfect package to be on the pace there.
“Let’s see, we will definitely try but unfortunately we don’t have much more performance to add to what we have at the moment, but we are still going to go all out from our side and see how far we can get.”
Source: Autosport