Kalle Rovanperä more than doubled his Rally Latvia lead across the course of Saturday morning’s four stages, but Takamoto Katsuta became the first Rally1 driver to hit genuine trouble.
While local hero Mārtiņš Sesks was able to initially keep two-time world champion Rovanperä honest during the early phases of the rally, the Toyota driver broke clear on Friday afternoon and picked up where he left off on Saturday.
Claiming two stage wins to open the morning allowed the 23-year-old to notch up his 200th career World Rally Championship stage win. Although he didn’t top SS11 he hit back on SS12 Vecpils to cement his authority on proceedings.
The only blot on Rovanperä’s copybook was a decision to take two spare tires instead of just one. But he leads the event by 34.8 seconds.
“We basically carried extra weight for nothing, so for sure not the best plan,” Rovanperä said. “But we managed to be quite fast so it’s OK.”
But there was disaster for Toyota team-mate Katsuta who messed up a chicane, slipped off the road and nudged a tree. That impact was enough to break his power steering and Katsuta dropped from fifth to seventh as a result.
Katsuta had to put in a workout inside the cockpit after damaging his power steering
“I went off on the chicane, and after that no power-steering,” he said. “[It’s a] shame.”
An epic fight for second is unfolding between Rally1 hybrid debutant Sesks and eight-time world champion Sébastien Ogier.
Over the course of the morning Ogier has gradually reeled Sesks in, overhauling him on the third of four stages of the loop.
Moving ahead by 0.2s, Ogier added another 0.4s to his advantage to lead Sesks by a scant 0.6s heading into service – despite declaring he was “not so happy with this first half of the day for sure”.
Sesks’ emotions were a stark contrast to Ogier’s: “This was incredible,” he beamed at the end of SS12, Vecpils.
“We are just enjoying because this is one of the most legendary stages and it’s incredible to drive this car.”
Ott Tänak is edging his way closer to the podium positions after an impressive morning in his Hyundai.
Tänak is rapidly closing on third place despite some minor brake issues
Losing two places and falling to sixth on Friday’s final stage also meant Tänak ran two places higher in the running order than he’d planned, but the Estonian made light work of recuperating that lost ground.
Immediately overhauling Adrien Fourmaux, it took just two further stages for Tänak to leap past Katsuta as well before he hit trouble.
He ended the loop 9.6s shy of third-placed Sesks, with a 21.3s advantage over Fourmaux.
Fourmaux finds himself under pressure from title contender Elfyn Evans, holding just a 5.9s advantage heading into the final stage of the loop.
But the M-Sport driver responded beautifully on SS12 to outpace Evans by 2.1s and extend the gap overall to an even eight seconds.
“I took every risk on that stage to be fair,” Fourmaux said. “Personally, I don’t think I can go much faster on that one. We are pushing and it’s still a long rally, so we’ll see.”
Championship leader Thierry Neuville has moved up one position across the morning to eighth, but with a 38.9s deficit to Katsuta ahead he’s not focused on climbing further but instead “testing some things” on his Hyundai.
Neuville occupies a lonely eighth place after overhauling Munster earlier in the morning
Team-mate Esapekka Lappi is ninth – feeling a lot happier than Friday despite being left with the dubious honor of running first on the road.
“We made some steps with the car, so now driving starts to be very close to [how it was in] the past,” Lappi said.
“And we are fastest through so far!” he joked, arriving to the stage end first.
He ended up ninth quickest but remains 8.1s ahead of Grégoire Munster overall after the M-Sport driver dropped two positions on Saturday morning.
“We are just struggling a lot with traction,” Munster commented. “We’ll see what we can do.”
Oliver Solberg’s healthy WRC2 lead remains intact – but he hasn’t been able to find the same feeling aboard his Škoda as he did on Friday.
Solberg is still flying in the WRC2 classification, well ahead of title rival Pajari
“I have no traction, a lot of wheel spin but a different type of roads today,” Solberg said.
“At least we have a gap, we can control it, we’re not taking risks of course so we’re just trying to do as best as we can.”
That gap stands at 25.2s over Mikko Heikkilä, who has responded well to pressure from Sami Pajari. Pajari had been closing on Heikkilä’s fellow Toyota GR Yaris Rally2, but lost ground as the morning progressed to sit 7.7s behind at the leg’s halfway point.
“It feels like something is missing, but I don’t know,” a reflective Pajari said.
“I’m trying [to push]… I don’t know. We need to find something and push again in the afternoon loop.”
