Esapakka Lappi’s hopes of securing a second career WRC event win further diminished on SS3 of Rally Estonia, as team-mate Thierry Neuville retained the overall lead and Ott Tänak continued his unbeaten run on the stages.
Lappi came into the event as one of the favorites for victory, especially after Ott Tänak’s five-minute penalty for an engine change. But a loss of hybrid on SS2 after a heavy landing dropped him over five seconds to Neuville.
Still lacking hybrid – a particular handicap on the fast stages of Estonia – and hitting a straw bale at a chicane cost Lappi another 5.9s to Neuville, leaving him 10.4s behind the rally leader in fourth. “We need to reset it on the service,” confirmed a disappointed Lappi.
There was some confusion at the stage-start too, as Lappi began the stage four minutes later than he should have done but no penalty was given.
Hyundai’s Neuville was 2.5s quicker than Toyota driver Kalle Rovanperä to extend his lead to 3.9s. Neuville was happy to be balancing excellent pace without pushing the limit too far.
“I feel quite OK to be honest,” he said. “A couple of corners I could do slightly faster but it’s early in the rally, and with that rhythm you need to keep very well concentrated to get through. A good start, I would say, but I feel like we can improve a little bit to get a little bit more speed.”
Rovanperä said he was still struggling on the loose gravel, being first car on the road. “There were some sections which were a bit better [than SS2] I would say, but some were worse,” he said.
“It’s crazy how much there is loose gravel. I need to drive basically the normal [road] car line because I cannot open the corners. But not much more I can do, we are driving quite well at the moment. I need to push quite hard and it’s not easy when you don’t have any grip – you are all the time on the limit.”
Tänak was again fastest for the third consecutive stage, although reckoned his Ford Puma lacked pace on the uphill sections. “Not too much motivation but need to do it,” he admitted, in reference to his time-penalty ruling him out of the victory battle.
“Still need to learn a bit. We obviously need to drive in the future as well, and hopefully some more good rallies to come. But now immediately when it starts to be more vertical, we start to go back to the old struggles – not so easy.”
Elfyn Evans dropped another 1.8s to team-mate Rovanperä, appearing to lack full confidence in his GR Yaris, but moved ahead of Lappi by 2.5s. “It was an OK run through, but just struggling for the last bid of speed that we need really,” he admitted.
The third Hyundai of Teemu Suninen again impressed, considering his lack of experience in the Rally1 machine. He dropped 8.2s to Neuville and lies fifth overall, 5.2s behind team-mate Lappi. “That’s pretty much what I expected it to be,” he said. But the challenge is quite big. The top guys are going really fast and they have done these stages before so they know exactly how to drive these cars here, but we are doing our best.”
Takamoto Katsuta remains sixth overall. He is now 7.5s behind Suninen after an overshoot on the stage, and just 1.1s ahead of M-Sport’s Pierre-Louis Loubet.
