Elfyn Evans has doubled up to take another stage win on the first morning of Rally Estonia, edging local favorite Ott Tänak by a single second.
Evans had stunned to the stage win on Friday’s opener, outpacing Tänak by some four seconds in his own backyard.
And despite losing some time through the initial splits of SS3 Mustvee, Evans did it again on Friday’s stage second to increase his rally lead to 5.3 seconds.
“A bit more comfortable now, just got used to the speed a little bit,” said Evans, who confessed he didn’t feel relaxed on the previous stage.
“For sure at the start I could feel some places to improve, so that [time loss in the early splits] makes sense.”
Tänak added: “Quite tricky in the woods there, I made a couple of mistakes and still struggled with a couple of things.”
Kalle Rovanperä felt like his disadvantage as road-sweeper was further exaggerated on Mustvee than it was on the proceeding stage: “This one is cleaning a lot, the grip is much worse than I was thinking,” he said.
But the championship leader still managed to produce the third fastest time, as he had on SS2, albeit dropping close to five seconds to team-mate Evans to trail by 12.6s.
Fifth-placed Thierry Neuville isn’t feeling quite comfortable with the rear of his Hyundai, and has already resigned himself as a spectator to the battle of victory out front – instead hoping to be “in a battle with Craig [Breen]”.
But Neuville’s deficit to Breen up ahead grew to 7.9s after SS3, although the M-Sport Ford driver wasn’t happy with his stage performance.
“I wasn’t committed enough, was just too sideways in places being too aggressive, so definitely lost a lot of time,” Breen said.
The overnight leader was 1.1s slower than Rovanperä to remain glued just 1.6s behind the Toyota overall, 14.2s off the rally lead.
Esapekka Lappi was visibly tentative on the brakes as he struggles with pads that aren’t binding properly.
The Toyota driver gave up 10.7s to stage winner Evans: “Same issue still, or maybe even worse. I don’t know what’s wrong, but definitely we need to change the brakes in the service,” he said.
And perhaps the disappointment had messed with Lappi’s brain, as he forgot how many stages completed the Friday morning loop.
“But OK, let’s do the next three, or two? It’s two [stages].”
The top six have been cut adrift of the chasing pack, with a 15.7s gap building between Lappi and seventh-placed Adrien Fourmaux.
Fourmaux jumped past Oliver Solberg on the stage who, despite his previous pedigree in Estonia, is already 46.5s adrift of the leader.
“I found this one even more difficult, I didn’t like to drive at all,” he said.
But the battle is at least super close between the tail-enders of the top 10 with no more than a second between each car.
Fourmaux leads Solberg by a single second, Solberg leads Pierre-Louis Loubet by 0.3s, who leads Gus Greensmith by 0.1s who leads Takamoto Katsuta by 0.7s.
But Katsuta is expecting to make some gains on the next two stages.
“This stage also I didn’t drive last year, so I need to increase my pace step by step,” he said, echoing his comments from SS2.
“The next two stages I have experience so I can be a bit closer, but let’s see.”
