WRC Chile: Tanak stars as Toyota win the manufacturers title
- Adam Shamsul
- Oct 2, 2023
- 3 min read
The WRC returned to Chile for the first time since 2019 with the championship still very much in the balance, as it marked the third from last rally of the season.
Day 1: Fine margins
The tough gravel stages instantly made an impression as the drivers tried to find every last millisecond. These fine margins caught out Esapekka Lappi on the first stage of the rally, as he cut a corner slightly too much and was pitched into a barrel roll by a block of concrete on the inside. Lappi and his co-driver, Janne Ferm, were uninjured, but the Hyundai i20 N was wrecked and that spelled the end of the rally for the pair before it had really begun.
Pierre-Louis Loubet also hit trouble early on in spite of an impressive start that saw him running in the top 4; another small error led to another barrel roll, demonstrating the unforgiving nature of the Rally Chile. Again, both driver and co-driver were unhurt, but again, that was the end of their rally.
Meanwhile, Loubet’s teammate Ott Tanak was pushing his Ford Puma to the limit, trading the lead with Elfyn Evans’ Toyota GR Yaris and Teemu Suninen’s Hyundai; the opening day was a fascinating battle between three drivers in three different machines. At the end of the first day, it would be Tanak who led Suninen by just 4.2 seconds. Championship leader Kalle Rovanpera had a dismal day languishing down in fifth, as being first on the road and having to sweep the gravel for his rivals lost him significant time.
Day 2: A risky tyre strategy
Toyota went for an aggressive tyre strategy as they put softs on all their cars, and this had the desired effect on the first stage of the day as Rovanpera took the stage win. However, this would come back to bite them in the following stages. Evans and Takamoto Katsuta both suffered tyre delaminations, with Evans losing both rear tyres on stage 9. The Toyota trio were able to limp to the end of the day on tyre conservation mode, but lost time and places to their rivals.
Tanak’s tyre strategy was far more cautious than the Toyotas’, making use of the hard compound tyres which served him well as he extended his rally lead over Suninen to almost a minute. Neuville also leapfrogged the struggling Toyotas to third, ten seconds ahead of Evans who was doing remarkably well to be running in fourth at the end of the day despite his tyre delaminations.
Day 3: Frustration and celebration
Understandably, Tanak played it slightly safer on the third day of the rally, losing a little bit of time to Suninen but not enough to put him under any pressure. The battle of the day was between the Hyundais, as Neuville won the morning stages to put his teammate Suninen under pressure for second place. Suninen lamented a few mistakes in his driving which cost him some time in stage 14, but they would cost him a lot more on the very next stage. The fine margins of Rally Chile were on show yet again as Suninen hit a tree stump and crashed out of the rally, and with it threw away a very strong second place. Neuville inherited second, but this was of little consolation to Suninen with his future at Hyundai still not clear.
And so it remained to the end; Tanak took his second win of the season with an imperious victory at Rally Chile by 42.1 seconds to Neuville, with the 3 Toyotas of Evans, Rovanpera and Katsuta rounding out the top 5 in that order. Evans took a nibble out of Rovanpera’s championship lead by finishing ahead, but the Finn took the win in the powerstage ahead of his teammate to claw a point back. Meanwhile, Oliver Solberg took the win in the WRC 2 category ahead of Skoda teammates Gus Greensmith and Sami Pajari.
The attrition of the Fords and Hyundais meant that Toyota wrapped up the manufacturer’s championship with two rounds to go. On the driver’s championship front, Evans’ podium sees his gap to his teammate in the championship close to 31 points with two rounds to go. Despite finishing first and second, Tanak and Neuville are out of contention for the title, guaranteeing the double of drivers and manufacturers titles for Toyota for the third year in a row. Evans needs to outscore Rovanpera to have a chance at his first WRC title, or else it will return to Finland before the final round in Japan.
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