Thierry Neuville vaulted up two places to third on Rally Estonia to form a Hyundai lockout of the podium places behind rally leader Ott Tänak and Craig Breen.
Neuville began the 5.97-mile Otepää stage in fifth, 0.2 seconds behind Sébastien Ogier and 2.8s back from third-place man Elfyn Evans.
But Neuville put the hammer down on SS4, going 4.9s quicker than Ogier and 3.3s faster than Evans to surge past both Toyotas and into third.
Evans is now half a second behind the Hyundai in the overall classification.
That was especially crucial given Neuville made it his target to beat both Evans and Ogier – the men that currently head him in the championship – this weekend.
“I would like to have a bit better balance at parts so I’m surprised by the time,” Neuville told stage-end reporters after his run.
Ogier, who is 4.2s behind team-mate Evans in fifth, said: “Difficult. Grip is pretty low, I do everything I can but it’s not so easy.”
Tänak, who took the lead from Kalle Rovanperä on the previous test, claimed his second stage win of the morning – but only just.
Breen was a narrow 0.1s slower, nudging Tänak’s lead to 4.5s. Neuville lies seven seconds away from Breen.
“The first stage was tricky,” said Tänak, “but after this it’s been better.”
Breen, whose radiator grille was filled with grass, explained “It’s from the previous stage”.
“I was sure I had a puncture, somebody pulled a huge rock in a place, I hit it on the rear right so I was a bit hesitant for a few kilometers,” he added.
“I’d like to nick a stage win off him [Tänak] but OK, it’s nice.”
Esapekka Lappi is sixth for M-Sport but described his SS4 run as being “on the limit, many times”.
“I tried,” he said. “That’s the speed we can do to be honest, I can’t go any faster.”
Lappi did however nick 0.4s from Takamoto Katsuta to extend his buffer over the Toyota to 1.6s in the battle for sixth.
Rovanperä was fifth fastest on Otepää to close to within six seconds of Katsuta, but his tire issue on SS2 means the early leader is now 33.4s adrift of the front.
Photo: Toyota Gazoo Racing
“It was quite strange on the last stage I don’t know where I got the puncture,” he said.
“It took rear right of the aero parts and this was my first time driving without aero parts so it was difficult but it was still quite OK so I was more careful than I needed to be.”
Teemu Suninen is 3.5s behind in ninth but still ahead of Pierre-Louis Loubet and Gus Greensmith.
Adrien Fourmaux leads the WRC2 category for M-Sport, profiting from a tire knocked off the rim for Citroën’s Mads Östberg.
“I was landing on the jump and straightaway I had a puncture. I don’t know why it happened but for sure it’s a puncture,” was Östberg’s rather frank assessment of the situation.
Hyundai’s Ole Christian Veiby won SS2 but hit a hay bale towards the end of that stage, and with a suspected radiator issue, he lost 41.3s on the following test; handing Östberg the lead.
Fourmaux was beaten by Hyundai’s Nikolay Gryazin on the stage but now has a 13.7s lead out front, with Gryazin just 1.7s behind Östberg in third. Pontus Tidemand is another 1.7s back in fourth.
Veiby dropped another 16.3s on SS4 to lie 47.2s behind.
SS4 times
1 Tänak (Hyundai) 5m04.5s
2 Breen (Hyundai) +0.1s
3 Neuville (Hyundai) +2.6s
4 Evans (Toyota) +5.9s
5 Rovanperä (Toyota) +6.0s
Leading positions after SS4
1 Tänak (Hyundai) 24m33.1s
2 Breen (Hyundai) +4.5s
3 Neuville (Hyundai) +11.5s
4 Evans (Toyota) +12.0s
5 Ogier (Toyota) +16.2s
6 Lappi (M-Sport Ford) +25.8s
7 Katsuta (Toyota) +27.4s
8 Rovanperä (Toyota) +33.4s
9 Suninen (M-Sport Ford) +36.9s
10 Loubet (2C Competition Hyundai) +51.1s
