We may be six months into the new Rally1 era of the World Rally Championship but there’s one type of event we still don’t know the competitive order on – fast, flowing gravel.
Rally Estonia is upon us and presents a challenge not yet seen so far this year. A win in Italy for Ott Tänak suggests Toyota may not have a stranglehold on gravel – and can Craig Breen drag M-Sport back into content on one of his happiest hunting grounds?
Looking at both recent results this season and over a decade of Rally Estonia history, this is DirtFish’s form guide for Rally Estonia 2022:
#2 Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Hyundai i20 N Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: DNF, 47th, 10th
Best WRC Estonia result: 9th (2020)
Estonia is a potential turning point for Oliver Solberg’s season.
His season has been plagued with issue after issue thus far – he limped to 10th with a hobbled i20 N Rally1 on Safari Rally last time out, retired with a broken steering arm in Portugal when pedaling a Rally2-spec i20, crashed out of Croatia and retired from fumes polluting the cockpit on Monte back in January.
His Estonia form looks more promising. This will be his first time here in a WRC-spec car but that’s probably not the disadvantage it might look like on paper. Solberg’s ninth overall in 2020 was complemented with a WRC3 class win, while he was also the quickest R5 runner when scoring seventh overall a year earlier.
Had Georg Gross not had a car advantage, piloting a 2017-spec Fiesta WRC against a field of R5s, back in 2019, Solberg would likely have become Estonian champion that year. Instead, he won the Baltic Rally Trophy – twice. He won the Latvian championship on his climb to the WRC too.
This is Solberg territory. If his season’s going to turn around anywhere, it’s here.
#4 Esapekka Lappi/Janne Ferm (Toyota GR Yaris Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: 44th, 49th, 3rd
Best WRC Estonia result: 7th (2020)
With road position heavily in his favor if the roads stay dry – though rain has already fallen in the region this week – Esapekka Lappi begins this rally in a good place.
What’s clear already is he has the pace to fight – a solid third place in Sweden helped Lappi find his footing as a factory driver again and he was leading in Italy before an unexpected compression flung his Yaris into the Sardinian scenery.
His Estonia form – one podium in three attempts – isn’t particularly representative. Both Lappi and Teemu Suninen had the same complaint about the Fiesta WRC when he finished seventh there in 2020 – a lack of top speed. On a fast event like Estonia, he had no chance.
And fifth in 2014, when Ott Tänak was victorious, was more to do with his S2000-spec Škoda not cutting it in a straight line compared to the top R5 and Group N cars than Lappi’s wheelwork.
Anything less than a podium will be considered a failure.
#7 Pierre-Louis Loubet/Vincent Landais (Ford Puma Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: 4th, 7th, 47th
Best WRC Estonia result: 7th (2021)
Pierre-Louis Loubet has thus far done an excellent job of resurrecting his WRC career, which looked to be in tatters after his ill-fated stint in a customer Hyundai.
Keeping that momentum going in Estonia might be a tough ask, though, when taking a look at his past form on fast gravel rallies.
He has only one class podium to his name, second among the R3 runners back in 2015 – and without Ole Christian Veiby crashing out and the engine in Marko Mänty’s Civic going pop, that silverware would likely have never materialized either.
He made several visits to Finland, rather than Estonia, during his stint in WRC2 and never reached the podium places. While Loubet did equal his then career-best WRC result of seventh in Estonia last year, he failed to get within one second per kilometer of a stage-winning time at any point.
On a rally where fortune favors the brave, Loubet’s season-long strategy of mitigating risks probably appears unlikely to deliver a strong result here.
#8 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai i20 N Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: DNF, 1st, 6th
Best WRC Estonia result: 1st (2020)
You simply cannot write off Ott Tänak on home soil. His record here is, unsurprisingly, completely unparalleled, scoring four wins, five podiums and 49 stage wins in seven starts. No matter what happens this week, he will leave Tartu still holding the all-time record across all those metrics.
Both years he showed up with a Toyota Yaris WRC, when Estonia was still a WRC ‘promotional event’, he wiped the floor with everyone, winning by over a minute each time.
He broke Hyundai’s long-running curse on fast gravel too. After years of failing to score a podium in Finland and only two third places in Poland after six years of toiling away, Tänak’s 2020 win in Estonia finally showed that the i20 could do the business on roads littered with crests.
Tänak’s brief flirtation with the lead on Rally Sweden, and Neuville’s subsequent podium, suggest the i20 N Rally1 might be just about fast enough to give him a shot at doing well. But Safari was a painful reminder that no matter what he does, the car might still let him down.
#11 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: 5th, 41st, 5th
Best WRC Estonia result: 3rd (2021)
Thierry Neuville’s pace on the final day of Rally Estonia last year could give him reason to be optimistic, having been able to fend off Sébastien Ogier’s Yaris in a straight fight. He won most stages that day, albeit helped by Kalle Rovanperä being able to engage cruise control with a massive lead out front.
But, rather understandably, Neuville appears to be at the end of his tether with Hyundai’s reliability woes. In Italy, having already lost nearly two minutes with a technical problem, he rolled out after pushing to catch up. On Safari, he planted his i20 into a tree only moments after losing several minutes with his car stalling.
He also had a potentially confidence-denting crash on the pre-event test for Estonia, clipping a concrete anti-cut marker and ending up in a ditch.
Like with Tänak, the big question mark is whether the car can handle Neuville throwing it over jumps and crests like there’s no tomorrow.
#16 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Ford Puma Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: 15th, DNF, 9th
Best WRC Estonia result: 12th (2021)
Few reading this will need reminding just how dire Adrien Fourmaux’s season has been to date. Three rally-ending crashes, super-rallying twice in Kenya (one of which was, arguably, self-inflicted after hitting a rock) and a ninth place in Portugal means that he doesn’t really have any form to speak of.
Will Estonia mark the turning point of Fourmaux’s year? Unlike Solberg, who likewise needs a shot in the arm to revive his season, Fourmaux doesn’t have a similar wealth of experience on these types of roads, even if he has done Rally Estonia itself three times now.
A second place in WRC2 – aided by a powerstage puncture for Nikolay Gryazin – was a handy result back in 2020, albeit two minutes off Solberg in the fastest R5. And beating Robert Virves to a class podium a year earlier, then driving a Ford Fiesta R2T19, was a positive sign too.
But Estonia, along with Finland afterwards, is very much a confidence rally. Based on how his season has gone, Fourmaux’s probably running a little low on that key ingredient to succeed in Estonia right now.
#18 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota Yaris GR Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: 3rd, 6th, 4th
Best WRC Estonia result: DNF (2020, 21)
Looking at Takamoto Katsuta’s run of Estonia results on the surface alone would suggest we should expect little from Toyota’s fourth driver.
That is, of course, complete nonsense.
Estonia was the turning point of Katsuta’s 2021 season, for all the wrong reasons. But that was not really of his own doing – poor Dan Barritt suffered a back injury after a heavy landing, just as Taka had taken his Yaris up to third overall.
A year earlier it had been his own fault, crashing out of fifth place. That wasn’t the case in 2019 though, when he barely got to turn a wheel as the cooling on the TMR-run Ford Fiesta Rally2 failed twice in two days.
So far Katsuta’s only WRC podiums have come in Kenya. He came oh-so-close to scoring a first piece of silverware on a traditional ‘sprint’ WRC event in Portugal, only to have it cruelly snatched away by Dani Sordo on the powerstage.
Estonia is his best chance yet to change that. This rally, based on his pace last year and the amount of experience he has on fast Finnish events, suits him well. And coming off the back of a first podium of the year, his confidence is restored once more.
#33 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota Yaris GR Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: 2nd, 40th, 2nd
Best WRC Estonia result: 4th (2021)
Elfyn Evans is still searching for his first win of the season – quite a surprising position for someone touted as a likely title contender this far into the season.
Driving a Toyota on a fast gravel rally has been a reliable recipe for success since the final set of World Rally Car technical regulations came along. Tänak’s Estonia win in 2020 was the only time a Yaris didn’t win in either Finland or Estonia during that time. It has undoubtedly been the car to have here – and there’s little to suggest that won’t be the case again this year.
Yet somehow Evans has transpired to do very little with the car at his disposal when rocking up to Estonia. Thus far Estonia has held 41 WRC stages; Evans has been in a podium position for only two of them. Last year was especially worrying, where he was the slowest Toyota from start to finish.
That said, he did make amends with victory in Finland, so perhaps his Estonia form no longer tells the full story. But having gone up against Rovanperä in a straight fight for victory three times this year and fallen short on every occasion, reversing that trend in Estonia looks a big ask.
#42 Craig Breen/Paul Nagle (Ford Puma Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: 6th, 2nd, 8th
Best WRC Estonia result: 2nd (2020, 21)
It’s strange to think that a lad from the Emerald Isle has become a bit of a specialist on fast gravel. There’s not a whole lot of that in Ireland.
A strange quirk of Craig Breen’s recent career means he’s had more seat time in this part of the world in WRC machinery than anywhere else, thanks to neither Dani Sordo or Sébastien Loeb wanting to contest Estonia or Finland when they were sharing the third Hyundai.
And when called up by Andrea Adamo to get points on the board for the team, Breen nailed the assignment, pocketing a pair of second places.
On the last three rounds in Portugal, Italy and Kenya, Breen mentioned every time that he felt a lack of experience of those rallies meant he wasn’t comfortable enough to risk finding the limit and going over it. That certainly won’t be the case in Estonia.
Scoring three podiums in four years, one of which was during the event’s stint as a promotional event, means this rally is riper than any other for him to show what both he and the Ford Puma are capable of.
#44 Gus Greensmith/Jonas Andersson (Ford Puma Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: 16th, 7th, 19th
Best WRC Estonia result: 8th (2020)
It’s all gone a bit pear-shaped for Gus Greensmith. Monte and Sweden were supposed to be his bogey rallies, events that had bested him before. He started with two fifth places, which he felt was somewhat against the odds.
Since then, he’s retired from three of the last four rounds and in Sardinia, when he slid wide and couldn’t get his car restarted, his pace fell off a cliff when he had no clear target to chase following the early time loss.
Fourmaux has received much stick for scoring only three points this year – but in the last four rounds, Greensmith has only managed eight.
It’s hard to know what Greensmith’s Estonia form is really like. He briefly ran fifth last year before a mechanical failure struck his car down, and there were moments under super rally where he was less than half a second per kilometer off the pace.
Most importantly, he was pretty much on then team-mate Teemu Suninen’s pace. And when he was pushing his pace was much closer to the leaders than it had been a year earlier, so he’s continuing to improve.
#69 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota GR Yaris Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: 1st, 5th, 1st
Best WRC Estonia result: 1st (2021)
Along with Greensmith, Rovanperä has the least Rally Estonia experience in the field, with only two trips to Tartu under his belt.
Considering he broke his WRC victory duck here last year, that lack of Estonian mileage counts for little. And then there’s his blockbuster form across the board in 2022.
Really the only question mark hanging over Rovanperä heading to Estonia is how much of a difference being first on the road will make. As Portugal showed, Rovanperä can work around that problem, though equally Sardinia proved that he isn’t a magician who can overcome the insurmountable.
Forecasts suggest rain is coming. That’s potentially music to Rovanperä’s ears, as there will be less sweeping to worry about. A fifth win in seven events remains a distinct possibility.
