Tanak punished 5 “, is no longer a leader in New Zealand

Repco Rally New Zealand leader Ott Tanak and Hyundai Motorsport teammate Thierry Neuville received 5-second time penalties that will take effect before the first stage on Saturday morning, leaving the lead to Elfyn Evans of Toyota Gazoo Racing.

Both men were found guilty of the same charge at the commissioners’ hearing on Friday evening. During the first special, SSS Auckland field, the energy released during the hybrid boosters of the two cars was above the maximum value allowed for this stage (241.03 kJ and 242.04 kJ vs 240 kJ).

Tanak gets punished and loses the rally lead

Marcos was represented at the hearing by Interim Team President Julien Monset and Team Manager Pablo Marcos, Marcos accepted the measured values ​​and admitted that one of their engineers had made a mistake because he did not know that the original Maximum Hybrid Boost value for SSS1 had been changed in Handout #2, Published September 21, 2022.

I apologize for this violation, which occurred due to human error. The judges considered that although the offense occurred twice to Tänak and once to Neuville, the performance advantage was still minimal. However, the maximum value has been exceeded. They therefore decided to impose the aforementioned penalty, also bearing in mind that the responsibility to ensure the vehicle matches at all times rests with the competitor.

This means overnight leader Tanak will be demoted to second place behind Evans, who finished Friday just 0.2 seconds behind the Estonian. Neuville holds sixth place overall, 50.4 seconds behind Evans.