There’s so much to love about Rally Estonia.
The roads, the atmosphere, the organization, the innovation – in so many ways, it has become a blueprint for how a modern World Rally Championship event should look.
“They’re making a fantastic job for the organization. Beautiful roads, we all have so much fun to drive here,” world champion Sébastien Ogier observed.
But Ogier did harbor a point of frustration.
“The competition somehow is never really happening because unfortunately it’s always cleaning too much every time and for a long time actually after many cars, so only the rules could make it different,” he added.
“Maybe you know, have the road order in one direction for the first half of the day and you switch over for the second half, I don’t know. But doing something maybe that would be the only way to mix it up a little bit.
“Like it is now… yeah, the late runners have a quite a clear advantage.”
There were no position changes in the top-five for 17 of the 18 stages last weekend
The road cleaning effect is typical of all gravel rounds of the world championship, but considering the high-speed nature of Rally Estonia’s stages it’s incredibly difficult for those who lose time on the first day to make any inroads for the rest of the event. And without any rocks being pulled out to complicate matters for those further back, the road just progressively gets faster.
Last weekend for example, the top five remained exactly the same from SS2 onwards. In 2023 the top five remained the same for both of Saturday and Sunday’s legs, while in 2025 the same five drivers were within the top five for 70% of the rally – although Hyundai team-mates Thierry Neuville and Ott Tänak regularly traded second and third places.
When Ogier’s comments were put to him, Hyundai sporting director Andrew Wheatley told DirtFish: “I don’t disagree with him, but that’s part of the sport, you know. On some rallies you win, on some rallies you lose.
“If it rains here, you want to be at the front. If it rained like it rained in the service park [on Sunday], you definitely want to be in the front.
“It’s complicated because wherever we go other than pure bone-dry Tarmac with no cuts, which doesn’t exist, there is the potential opportunity for compromise. But honestly, for sure Elfyn [Evans] struggled this weekend but that’s part of how the championships unravels. At least we don’t have three or four rallies like this on the trot all the time, there’s generally a bit of respite.”
Evans himself, who sweeped the stages clean on Friday, said the issue isn’t specfic to Estonia.
“I think there’s many situations that are like this,” Evans told DirtFish, “but I think the request for qualifying has been ignored enough times now to the point where there’s not much point in bringing the topic up again.
“I think the reality is you have a rally like this, it’s super fast, the gaps are close anyway. You then have stages which everybody knows like the back of their hand because everybody has WRC+ now to look back over.
“Séb was probably the one at the biggest disadvantage from that side because he hasn’t been here [for five years]. But then it’s even more difficult to make the difference and the road position is even more punishing in a way.
“So it would be the type of rally that would benefit from some kind of qualifying or some kind of chance to mitigate that penalty of the road cleaning a bit. What the answer is, I’m not sure, but something probably needs to be done.
“It feels pretty unfair that you can’t fight on… all you want is an equal playing field, you’re not asking for an advantage, you know? Just something a bit more equal.”
Third-placed Adrien Fourmaux, however, said drivers just have to deal with what they get.
“It’s the profile of the rally, I would say we have to deal with it,” he told DirtFish. “There is some places where it gets rutted, but it’s not like there was loose rocks, etc. So for me, it was OK.”
