Kalle Rovanperä is continuing to make World Rally Championship competition look effortless as he shot further clear of Elfyn Evans, while Craig Breen punctured on the second pass of Otepää.
Breen is running first on the road on Saturday following his off on Friday and has had a quietly impressive day with several top five times.
But clipping a felled anti-cut device on one of the first corners of Otepää was less ideal as it forced Breen to stop and change a puncture.
It made little impact to Breen’s overall rally, but he was a tad frustrated as he felt the anti-cut device wasn’t properly placed.
“I’d be the first person to praise everything about this rally but obviously on the first pass on the first left corner of the stage it had been taken out of it,” he said.
“Obviously they’ve got a big red pole on the top of them so you can see them, but it was laying down underneath the grass so I just drove right over it.
“It makes it a bit unfair, if it’s over they should put it back upright and put a pole over it or take it out completely.
“Whoever was first on the road was going to hit that.”
Conditions were dry for the first couple of runners, Breen and Oliver Solberg, before rain began to fall and transformed proceedings.
Solberg was therefore able to set a competitive time, only usurped by the current top three – but his stage wasn’t without drama.
“I had a massive moment and the car just bottomed out completely and I came like that,” Solberg said, gesturing with his hand that the car was sideways, “so it was a proper jump.”
At the head of the field, Rovanperä has refused to turn down the wick in his battle with Elfyn Evans.
The championship leader, who won Rally Estonia last year, has been stealing chunks of time from his team-mate across the morning and into the afternoon, and on the second pass of Otepää Rovanperä beat Evans by another 3.5 seconds to establish a crushing 29.4s lead.
“The feeling is now good in the car, so I don’t know what else we could do,” Rovanperä said, surely stealing the words out of his rivals’ mouths for their own performances.
“We are just driving a good pace, there is not so much risks or anything so I think this is quite a good way to go.”
Evans meanwhile described the stage as “pretty difficult”, commenting that “the ruts were really quite bad, so not easy”.
Thierry Neuville had arrived at the end of the previous stage saying he felt like he was repeating himself at the end of stages, as he is battling to find the right feeling with his Hyundai.
So stage-end reporter at the end of SS16, former WRC co-driver Seb Marshall, decided to mix it up and asked Neuville what his favorite stage of the rally has been so far.
“Ha! I still have to pick one,” said Neuville. “Hopefully the powerstage.”
The Hyundai driver is fourth overall, 1m07.8s behind team-mate and home hero Ott Tänak but 1m16.5s clear of Takamoto Katsuta.
Katsuta and Adrien Fourmaux had been close together on the leaderboard but across the afternoon Katsuta has pulled clear to establish a 16.6s lead over the M-Sport driver.
Esapekka Lappi is tucked behind them both in seventh and took it “carefully” on SS16.
Gus Greensmith was “kicked out the line” by ruts that “were so deep” towards the end of the stage, but he insisted it “wasn’t a big moment”.
He was quicker than Pierre-Louis Loubet by 2.1s but lies over a minute adrift in ninth overall.
