Ola Nore Jr made it two Junior ERC wins from two events as he swept to success on Tet Rally Liepāja while a time penalty cost Max McRae victory.
The Renault Clio Rally4 driver won by 24 seconds from Victor Hansen (Peugeot 208 Rally4) and Norbert Maior (Peugeot), doubling up on his Rally Poland victory last month to extend his championship lead.
The early pace was set by 16-year-old Estonian driver Jaspar Vaher – the only one of the 17 category starters not to compete in Poland – who held a 35s advantage over Nore after SS5. But Vaher was then excluded when his Ford Fiesta Rally4 was found to be 31kg underweight.
That handed Nore a slender 1.1s lead over McRae. The Norwegian had been quicker on every stage except SS3 when he suffered a problem with his gear lever and lost over 20s to McRae’s Opel Corsa.
McRae, who was celebrating his 19th birthday, overturned that to the tune of a one-second lead after the end-of-day Liepāja City superspecial, only to be hit with a one-minute penalty for clocking in early to the time control.
Nore therefore held a 15.5s lead over Hansen going into the final day’s stages. Almost 30s further back, Miko Jalava (Fiesta) threw away third position when he went off at the end of Sunday’s second test.
Nore, joined by Andreas Mikkelsen’s regular co-driver Torstein Eriksen, eased his pace over the remaining stages to take a comfortable win from Hansen, with Maior a further 6.6s adrift.
After repeating his Rally Poland success, Nore now holds a 15-point lead in the championship standings ahead of Hansen and Maior, who are joint second having reversed their Rally Poland results.
“All the stages have been good but we had the problem in SS3 so I thought, ‘No, the rally is gone!’” said 22-year-old Nore after clinching victory. “But we didn’t give up and here we are. And I was throwing up before these two stages because I got sick!”
Eriksen added: “I’m so impressed. All the week, from the recce start, it’s high concentration. He did really well on the rough conditions today and we kept it steady. But we had to keep it up as well so I’m really impressed the way he did it.”
Estonian driver Mark-Egert Tiits (Fiesta) was fourth ahead of McRae, who fought back to fifth to end up 56.8s behind the winner. The Scot was, therefore, 3.2s faster than anybody on the stages. Germany’s Timo Schulz (Opel) rounded out the top six.
Seventh place went to Italian Roberto Daprà ahead of fellow countryman Mattia Zanin, both at the wheel of Peugeot 208s.
Of the 17 starters, 13 made the finish of the event, with the top 10 completed by Aoife Raftery (Peugeot) and Mille Johansson (Fiesta).
