Ott Tanak made a victorious competitive return to rallying by claiming victory on his American Rally Association National Championship debut at Overmountain Rally Tennessee.
The 2019 world rally champion piloted a factory-supported Toyota GR Corolla Rally RC2 car at the gravel rally in what was the Estonian’s first competitive outing since last year’s World Rally Championship season finale in Saudi Arabia. The rally was also Tanak’s first win driving for Toyota since the 2019 Rally Catalunya.
Tanak and co-driver Martin Jarveoja ultimately took the victory in the 13-stage event by 1m04.3s from Canada’s four-time ARA champion Brandon Semenuk, co-driven by British co-driver Keaton Williams.
The ARA debut marked Tanak’s latest outing with Toyota having taken up a test and development driver role with the manufacturer this year after opting to leave the Hyundai WRC team at the end of 2025.
The Estonian has undertaken significant work developing Toyota’s all-new 2027 WRC car ahead of the championship's big shift in technical regulations next year. In July Toyota deployed Tanak at Rally di Roma Capitale in Italy, where he drove non-competitively in the 0-B car to gather data ahead of the event’s likely inclusion in the WRC next year.
Gathering data was also the key reason for Tanak’s run at Overmountain Rally Tennessee, given the region is part of a bid to bring the WRC back to the USA in 2027.
Tanak set 10 fastest times on the gravel stages on his way to victory. The Toyota driver was initially beaten by Skoda Fabia RS Rally2 driver Semenuk on the opening test by 0.1s.
Tanak immediately hit back to win the next three tests to end Friday, leading the rally by 30.1s over Subaru’s Conner Martell. Seven stage wins accross Saturday cemented his lead before eventually taking the victory from Semenuk with the sister Toyota GR Corolla RC2 piloted by Seth Quintero coming home in third, 1m50.0s ahead of Lia Block.
It is unclear when Tanak will return to the stages, although it is likely his involvement in developing Toyota’s WRC 2027 car will continue this year.
