Toyota star Ott Tanak appears to hold all the cards as the World Rally Championship’s silly season gets into gear, months before the season is even over.
The championship leader is the sport’s highest profile “free agent”, with his two-year contract with the Toyota Gazoo Racing squad coming to an end after November’s Rally Australia.
Toyota are naturally keen to retain the Estonian, but he has already been linked to the big budget Hyundai squad, and to M-Sport, the team that gave him his WRC start.
Sebastien Ogier (Citroen) and Thierry Neuville (Hyundai) are locked away for next season, meaning that until Tanak makes his move for 2020, many other drivers will be sitting twiddling their thumbs, and hoping their managers can come up with an acceptable deal.
Where New Zealand’s Hayden Paddon fits into the mix remains to be seen, although his performance in next week’s much-anticipated Rally Finland will have a huge bearing on whether he can land a full-time drive next season.
We know Paddon is fast, and we know he is a winning driver, but getting thrown in at the deep end in Finland is no easy task.
He’s driven incredibly fast in New Zealand this year, but Finland is next level. Driving the 2019 Ford Fiesta WRC for the first time, and on the WRC’s fastest rally, simply adds to the pressure.
It’s not like Paddon’s 2020 seat rivals will be resting on their laurels either.
Craig Breen has the Hyundai seat that should have been Paddon’s, and drivers like Andreas Mikkelsen and Esapekka Lappi will be hell-bent on impressing after less than glorifying seasons to date.
Young guns Kalle Rovanpera and Oliver Solberg can’t be ignored either, and it would be a shock not to see both of them in WRC teams next year – in some form at least.
Money won’t be an object for the top teams either, particularly Toyota and Hyundai.
“If I have the money I would hire all the top drivers in the championship,” Hyunda boss Andrea Adamo said recently. “I’m paid to win the championship.”
For drivers like Paddon, who has had to get support from his backers to land the M-Sport drive in Finland, that doesn’t necessarily bode well.
Suninen, Rovanpera and Solberg have all come into rallying with money behind them, and given that they’re European based, that counts for plenty.
It seems unfair to say that Rally Finland could be the defining moment of Hayden Paddon’s career, but the reality is, that may actually be the case.
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