Kalle Rovanperä is one day away from a crushing Rally Latvia win, as Sébastien Ogier put a little bit of room between him and Mārtiņš Sesks in the fight for second.
Rovanperä, who began his rally career on Latvian roads, has been in a class of his own for most of the weekend. Although he was initially challenged by home hero Sesks, since Friday afternoon the reigning world champion has had an extra gear and begun pulling away from his rivals.
Running as the last car on the field on Saturday only strengthened Rovanperä’s grip on the rally, and across the leg he reeled off stage win after stage win.
After the leg-concluding Liepāja City Stage, the Finn leads the way by a commanding 42.5s – a position that, should he complete Sunday’s mileage, will earn him top Saturday points.
Rovanperä was entirely untroubled on Saturday, having already gone faster on the Saturday morning loop despite the penalty of an extra spare tire
With Rovanperä disappearing over the horizon, Sesks’ fight has been with Toyota’s other part-time world champion Ogier. The Latvian started the day ahead but Ogier made his way past just before lunchtime, and steadily pulled away over the afternoon.
The gap between the pair stands at 4.7s ahead of Sunday’s action.
Ott Tänak is an important fourth overall; important because that enabled him to score four more points than title rival Elfyn Evans and eight more than series leader Thierry Neuville.
But the 2019 world champion suffered a major drama on SS14 when a collapsed inflatable arch, broken by Evans ahead of him on the road, lay in his path and the stage wasn’t red-flagged, meaning Tänak approached it at full speed and his i20 N Rally1 became entangled with it.
He then overshot his braking and nosed a haybale on the Liepāja City Stage, causing some damage to his Hyundai.
“On the jump landing, something broke on the gearbox or the driveshaft and obviously I couldn’t slow down at all,” Tänak smiled. “It’s been some afternoon!”
Adrien Fourmaux is fifth after Saturday, successfully keeping Evans behind him by 17.9s. Takamoto Katsuta had been ahead of both but a mistake at a chicane in the morning broke his power-steering and dumped him down to seventh.
Katsuta made life difficult for himself by clipping a barrel filled with water on the city stage, making things slippery for him on the second lap.
“Sorry for the other guys!” he said.
Eighth place is realistically the best Neuville could’ve hoped for with such a large gap (+47.9s) ahead of him, and vindicated Hyundai’s decision to drop Esapekka Lappi behind him overall on Friday so that it would be Lappi instead that swept the road.
Neuville will be targeting Sunday points to recoup the points lost to Tänak and Evans in the title race
“There wasn’t much more we could do today, to be honest; we had a good run. Let’s say it was a good day in the car, but not the result we are looking for,” Neuville said.
A change in setup unlocked some more confidence from Lappi, who ended the day 29.8s ahead of Grégoire Munster.
Munster had a dramatic afternoon after overcooking a jump and landing off-line, running wide into a field and damaging the front splitter of his Ford Puma Rally1 on the afternoon’s first test.
The lack of aero severely compromised Munster’s pace, who admitted driving with the damage was “no joke” and then appeared to have an engine issue on the last stage too.
He said: “For sure a hard day today, but at least we made it through. We’ll try and see what’s happening with the engine – hopefully nothing major,” he said.
Oliver Solberg leads WRC2 by a strong 26.6s overnight in his Škoda. Despite not feeling as happy as the previous day, the Swede still looks on course for victory over Mikko Heikkilä who did well to keep the fellow Toyota of Sami Pajari 5.0s behind.
With no retirements in the Rally1 field, and 10 cars entered with M-Sport entering three cars and Toyota four, Latvia marked the first time since the new points system was introduced that no Rally2 drivers scored any overall points on Saturday.
