Kalle Rovanperä heads into the final day of Rally Estonia with a 29.1-second lead over Toyota team-mate Elfyn Evans, as Adrien Fourmaux won the final superspecial stage of Saturday.
Rovanperä has been in total command of the second full day in Estonia. Although Evans edged him on Saturday morning’s opener, Rovanperä was fastest on all seven of the succeeding forest stages to put the contest out of the reach of Evans.
But on the Tartu superspecial – which was now extremely rutted following the first pass on Thursday evening – the competitive order was somewhat thrown out the window.
It was up to Fourmaux to bring Rovanperä’s stage-winning streak to an end, claiming his third career stage win and first on an event other than Safari Rally Kenya.
Evans was quicker than Rovanperä too, although by just four tenths, but he’ll need to find a lot more to mount any serious pressure on the World Rally Championship points leader on Sunday.
Home hero Ott Tänak has consistently been the closest to the two leading Toyotas on the Saturday timesheets, but the Hyundai pilot is some 42.4s adrift of second-placed Evans in the final podium place.
Team-mate Thierry Neuville is in no man’s land, another 1m08.8s behind Tänak and almost two minutes off the lead. He gained a place as Esapekka Lappi was relegated from fourth to seventh place in the morning when a tire punctured over a landing.
Lappi has struggled for motivation thereafter, dropping behind Takamoto Katsuta and Adrien Fourmaux who had been closely matched until Katsuta began to steal a march across the afternoon.
Although Fourmaux beat Katsuta by an impressive 2.5s on the Tartu superspecial, Katsuta heads into the final day with 10.9s in hand over Fourmaux – although neither driver seemed particularly interested in the battle as they both simply aimed to stick to their rhythm and manage their performance.
Pierre-Louis Loubet is eighth ahead of Gus Greensmith who suffered the same fate as Lappi on the very same stage in the morning.
Craig Breen and Oliver Solberg are both well outside the points and ran as the first two cars onto the road on Saturday.
Both had their dramas – Breen picked up a flat very early on SS16 Otepää when he drove over a felled anti-cut device which was hidden in said cut, while Solberg suffered a wild moment over a jump on the same test and flirted with his maiden WRC stage win throughout the day.
Solberg ended up second fastest on Tartu, just one tenth of a second off Fourmaux’s stage-winning time.
Andreas Mikkelsen remains atop the WRC2 class, lying 10th overall in his Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo, though had a late scare on the Tartu superspecial.
Estonia is an important rally for Mikkelsen who retired from the lead of both Portugal and Sardinia with engine problems, though had a small moment on the day-ending superspecial when he oversteered on the exit of the final corner and slid off at slow-speed into a rock.
That moment cost him 6.3s relative to the chasing Teemu Suninen, who reduced the lead gap to 10.6s.
Behind Hyundai’s WRC2 flagbearer, Mikkelsen’s Toksport stablemate Marco Bulacia holds third, keeping Finnish champion Emil Lindholm at arm’s length throughout the day.
