Craig Breen leads a round of the World Rally Championship overnight for the first time in his career, as Ott Tänak ran into a small gearbox problem on Rally Estonia’s opening stage.
As has become tradition the short (but slippery) blast around the one-mile Tartu superspecial kickstarted this year’s Rally Estonia, but it was run in opposite direction to last year.
Breen, who has been second in Estonia the past two seasons for Hyundai, set out his stall on SS1 with fastest time in his M-Sport Ford, 0.1 seconds up on points leader and last year’s Estonia winner Kalle Rovanperä.
Asked if this was a sign of things to come this weekend, Breen said: “Let’s see. I was so careful of all the rocks in there, I was trying to be as neat as we could, but it’s a good start to the weekend.
“Looking forward to tomorrow, these are amazing stages we can let our hair down. Flat to the square right.”
Home favorite Tänak stopped the clocks half a second down on Breen which didn’t necessarily suggest that something was amiss, but the 2019 world champion revealed at stage-end that his Hyundai wasn’t behaving like it should.
“The event is fun, hopefully it will be fun inside the car! This stage again I was stuck in a gear, things like this, they don’t give me much optimism,” he said.
Tänak is fifth overnight, behind both Elfyn Evans and team-mate Thierry Neuville who are 0.2s and 0.3s off Breen’s lead respectively.
Esapekka Lappi topped the shakedown stage earlier on Thursday but was only sixth quickest on the first stage. He is expected to perform well in Estonia, but Lappi is aware he needs to get his car to the finish.
“Definitely we can really do what we sort of want to, but I want to finish now,” he said.
“That needs to be in our minds because two retirements in a row is not good.”
Takamoto Katsuta was quick to thank his Toyota Next Generation team after they readied his GR Yaris Rally1 for the rally following Katsuta’s crash on shakedown.
“Huge thanks to the guys who fixed the car, I need to bring it back for them,” he said.
Katsuta was the seventh and final car within a second of Breen’s stage-winning effort, losing 0.9s to the M-Sport driver.
Oliver Solberg was majestic to watch as he hustled and slid his Hyundai around the opening stage of Rally Estonia, but his time didn’t reflect the show as he was only ninth fastest, a tenth down on Gus Greensmith.
“It’s nice to be back on a proper gravel rally, it’s been a very long time,” Solberg said.
“Estonia, I have won [my class] twice before and had a really good feeling, so hopefully I can get this feeling back and get my confidence back and start doing something good.”
Pierre-Louis Loubet was 0.1s down on Solberg in his Ford Puma Rally1, while his French compatriot and team-mate Adrien Fourmaux was another 1.5s back – rounding out the Rally1 runners in 11th.
Teemu Suninen set the pace in WRC2, 0.7s up on WRC returnee Hayden Paddon and Georg Linnamäe who shared the second-fastest time in class.
Reigning champion Andreas Mikkelsen was a second down on Suninen’s effort, despite a slightly wild run that featured a small tap with a hay-bale.
Before the first stage officially got underway, the WRC team principals each completed the test in a V8-engined pick-up truck as a showpiece for the fans.
Toyota’s Jari-Matti Latvala – who was the overwhelming favorite given he’s the most experienced driver in WRC history – went fastest, 3.1s faster than M-Sport Ford’s Richard Millener with Hyundai’s Julien Moncet another 11.5s further back.
“I tell you have the pressure because everyone told me I had to win, and if I made any mistakes everybody would remind me for the next 10 years!” Latvala said.
“It was a very clean stage, no mistakes and it was good fun. I think we should have more races like this between the team principals!”
