Kalle Rovanperä has surged into the lead of a World Rally Championship event for the first time in his career by winning Saturday’s opening stage of Rally Estonia.
Toyota driver Rovanperä, who admitted that only a podium will satisfy him this weekend, set a strong benchmark on the 12.57-mile Prangli test, outpacing Hyundai’s Craig Breen – who declared it “an absolute honor” to drive a Rally1 car on such a high-speed stage – by 1.3 seconds.
His lead is a slender one though – just 0.3s over Breen, who was one second quicker than Rovanperä on Friday night’s Tartu superspecial.
Rovanperä’s Toyota team-mate Elfyn Evans was third fastest, 2.1s behind to occupy third place; 1.3s adrift of the early leader.
Hyundai’s home hero Ott Tänak had been ahead of Rovanperä through the early splits but dropped back towards the end of the stage, losing 2.8s to the Toyota. The world champion is therefore fourth, 1.5s behind the leader and just two tenths adrift of Evans.
Sébastien Ogier had shared the overnight lead with Esapekka Lappi but fell to fourth, 2.6s shy of his young team-mate Rovanperä, after managing the fifth-best time on Prangli.
Thierry Neuville’s Hyundai outpaced Ogier by 0.5s but started the stage 1.5s behind, so remains behind the six-time champion.
Lappi dropped from first to seventh with a time 9.7s shy of stage winner Rovanperä’s. Toyota junior Takamoto Katsuta is eighth ahead of M-Sport’s Teemu Suninen and Hyundai junior Pierre-Louis Loubet.
Gus Greensmith is 11th, rounding out the Rally1 honors with a 25.2s overall deficit to Rovanperä.
Hyundai’s Ole Christian Veiby leads the WRC2 class over Citroën’s Mads Östberg, setting a time that was five seconds quicker despite hitting a hay bale towards the end of the stage.
His team-mate Nikolay Gryazin was 15.5s back after surviving a high speed spin and battling with a loose bonnet pin on his i20 R5.
Leading positions after SS2
1 Rovanperä (Toyota)
2 Breen (Hyundai) +0.3s
3 Evans (Toyota) +1.3s
4 Tänak (Hyundai) +1.5s
5 Ogier (Toyota) +2.6s
6 Neuville (Hyundai) +3.6s
7 Lappi (M-Sport Ford) +8.3s
8 Katsuta (Toyota) +10.9s
9 Suninen (M-Sport Ford) +15.8s
10 Loubet (2C Competition Hyundai) +21.1s
