Despite their lack of experience on snow it was a good event for the M-Sport World Rally Team drivers Ott Tanak and Elfyn Evans on Rally Sweden, round 2 of the FIA World Rally Championship. The two drivers finished fourth and sixth on the snow covered event and the team remain third in the manufactures championship.
Tanak’s pace gradually increased as his confidence improved throughout the event and the Estonian managed second fastest time on stage 17 on his way to fourth overall. The performance continues on from the strong pace he showed in Monte Carlo.
“I’m really happy to have come away with fourth position,” said Tanak. “We struggled in the beginning – the road position wasn’t great and I made a little mistake early on. After that we weren’t really in any sort of a battle so we just had to play it smart and stay on the road – and here we are with a really strong result.”
Elfyn Evans recovered from an off on stage 8 to take an impressive sixth place finish. The Welshman set two fourth fastest stage times during the event has his confidence grew. The result sees Evans tied for 5th place in the overall championship standings as the crews head into the next round.
“It’s been an event of two halves,” said Evans at the end of the event. “We made a mistake which cost us a lot of time on Friday and we struggled to find the confidence at times, but generally I think we’ve learnt a lot and we were able to show some pretty good pace towards the end.”
The WRC heads to round three in Mexico on March 5th.
