Elfyn Evans edged Kalle Rovanperä to the first stage win of Saturday to keep the contest to win Rally Estonia alive, although neither Toyota driver was happy with their run on SS10.
Evans had led Estonia for the vast majority of Friday, only losing his advantage on the final stage when differing conditions between him and first-on-the-road Rovanperä shook things up.
But now that he’s out front, last year’s winner and current WRC points leader Rovanperä isn’t about to surrender his position in a hurry.
However he was beaten on Elva, albeit to the tune of just six tenths of a second, to trim his overall advantage to 11.1s.
“I had a really bad stage to be honest, lost easy seconds everywhere. Not happy at all with my run so let’s try and improve on that,” he said.
Evans felt similar: “I had a horrible start around the track [at the start of the stage] to be honest, but other than that it wasn’t too bad.”
Third-placed Ott Tänak was third fastest on SS10 Elva, despite a scare “working on the brakes” as he left service.
“Yeah, feeling OK,” he said.
He dropped just 1.4s to stage winner Evans.
Thierry Neuville uncharacteristically backed off throughout Friday, resigning himself to just picking up the pieces if somebody falls off the podium.
But he began Saturday’s stage, which are different in profile to Friday’s, with intent, outpacing fourth-placed Esapekka Lappi by 2.5s.
“The profile is a bit different and I felt a bit more confident in here, despite it being a new stage,” said Neuville after Elva, which is running in reverse in 2022.
“I’m missing a grip now so we have to find a better compromise and carry on. We have the whole day to find a setting.”
Lappi was more downbeat, having had his overall advantage trimmed to 4.5s.
“It’s a little different than yesterday, easy to improve,” he said.
Takamoto Katsuta was on a wild ride through the rallycross section of the Elva test, running wide on several corners.
“Basically every corner I made a mistake,” he chuckled, “but that was hopefully good fun for the spectators.”
The accidental showboating didn’t cost Katsuta anything in his battle for sixth with Adrien Fourmaux either, as Fourmaux stopped the clocks 1.2s slower to lie just 1.6s overall now.
“I was a little bit struggling with the setup, we changed something yesterday but I think we need to go back,” Fourmaux explained.
It was a slightly surprising time as he had been ahead of Katsuta throughout all the splits bar the final one.
Greensmith shook his head and described his pacenotes as “massively optimistic” after completing SS10
“At the beginning there was a junction that I had a three-right plus that was third gear, but it was closer to first gear so don’t know how I missed it,” he said.
“Then there was a jump and I jumped but slightly to the right so we hit a bale – not a good start.”
The messy run did little to affect his overall position as Greensmith is 24.7s down on Katsuta but comfortably 1m25.9s ahead of Pierre-Louis Loubet who felt he was “too careful” on-stage as he looked to rebuild his confidence after his roll on Friday.
Oliver Solberg fell to 27th overall due to his power-steering issues late on Friday, 12 minutes down on the leader, so the chances of him taking championship points away from Estonia look bleak.
But at least he wasn’t feeling the strain in his muscles on Saturday morning: “After Ypres last year, after 85km on Tarmac with no power-steering nothing beats that!
“Car is OK,” he added, “just need to fine-tune it and get some confidence.”
Craig Breen was the only Rally1 driver to retire on Friday and he returned to action on SS10 as first car on the road, setting the fifth fastest time, 6.5s off the pace.
