Kalle Rovanperä has nibbled more time away from Rally Estonia leader Elfyn Evans, narrowing his Toyota team-mate’s advantage to 10.9 seconds.
Rovanperä had broken Evans’ stage-winning streak on the previous test with his first stage win of the weekend. And the championship leader is in a combative mood as he nicked another 3.5s from Evans on SS8.
“I don’t know what he had [in terms of conditions], but for sure for me it was pretty difficult at the start,” Evans said.
Rovanperä did have it similar though, commenting: “The beginning was really tricky with a lot of standing water but the middle and end parts were actually quite enjoyable”.
It puts Evans under significant pressure, as at the start of the afternoon his rally lead was almost 20 seconds.
Ott Tänak has slipped adrift and firmly into no man’s land in third place overall, 20.9s down on Rovanperä but 24.5s clear of Esapekka Lappi.
Toyota’s third driver was third-fastest on the Raanitsa stage despite taking it “safely through”.
“I did what I could, to be fair,” added Lappi.
“I saw some bad ruts and some dark places where you have dark mud I backed off, just to be sure I don’t get caught.”
Fifth-placed Thierry Neuville’s confidence-sapped run continued, and he was tight-lipped at stage-end: “We had an OK stage, and we carry on.”
Pierre-Louis Loubet is just 0.9s ahead of Takamoto Katsuta now after losing 8.2s to his rival due to his windshield wipers still not working.
That should’ve allowed Adrien Fourmaux to begin to leave his French compatriot and fellow M-Sport driver behind, but an overshoot and subsequent three-point turn at a chicaned junction pegged him back.
It cost Fourmaux – who also had wiper problems – 2.2s to Loubet and means he drops behind his rival into seventh place by just one tenth of a second.
“It’s a shame, it was a beautiful stage,” Fourmaux concluded.
Gus Greensmith reported an ill feeling with the rear of his M-Sport Ford Puma on the previous test, and despite some “checks” on the road section he admitted he “hadn’t gotten to the bottom of it” even if things had improved.
“I put a new tire on it which was tricky in the watery sections as it was opposite-way tread so there were a few snaps, but to be honest it did feel a bit better yeah,” he said.
Oliver Solberg fell behind the leading WRC2 runners as a result of his collision with a tree on SS7 that broke his power steering.
The 20-year-old failed checked into the stage 19 minutes late, racking up 3m10s worth of time penalties and dropping him out of the top 20 places overall.
