Thierry Neuville moved into the lead of Rally Estonia on the first stage of Friday morning. The Hyundai driver now holds a 3.2-second advantage over Toyota’s Kalle Rovanperä after the 15-mile Peipsiääre, a more technical stage than many to come.
“It’s not an easy stage to kick off, to be honest,” said Neuville. “It wasn’t a great, great stage but it wasn’t bad either. There’s more to come.”
Resigned to losing time running first on the road, Rovanperä could be satisfied with his performance, losing just 4.1s to Neuville.
Rovanperä said: “It’s going to be really bad. I was pushing really hard on this stage all the time. I’m using the whole road everywhere; I cannot do anything more. It was a good stage but I think it’s going to clean a lot so that’s how it is. We did our best.”
Joint overnight leaders Esapekka Lappi and Elfyn Evans slipped to third and fourth overall. Lappi’s Hyundai was 5.5s slower than team-mate Neuville, suffering with a lack of hybrid after a heavy jump landing. “I jumped too much in the beginning and the hybrid went off,” he explained. “But my mistake fully.” He is now 4.5s behind Neuville overall.
Evans was 2.3s slower than his team-mate, admitting to a “a couple of small mistakes”, with a missing mirror and some greenery attached to the car as evidence.
The third Hyundai of Teemu Suninen is fifth overall, 7.4s behind Neuville. Potentially benefiting from being last on the road of the Rally1 cars, Suninen was fourth fastest through the stage, 4.5s slower than Neuville.
The Finn is having to adapt to Rally1 machinery on his first event back in the top-flight. “The machine is just crazy, it’s so fast!” he said. “I’m just trying to do my best.”
As in Thursday evening’s superspecial, Ott Tänak charged through the stage and was the fastest of all, a mighty five seconds quicker than Neuville. But his five-minute penalty for an engine change leaves well down the order.
Out of contention for a strong result, Tänak admitted to his mood being “not the greatest this morning as well but if there’s nothing to lose then just pin it, so let’s see how far we get.”
The third Toyota of Takamoto Katsuta was sixth fastest through the stage, 14.1s slower than Tänak, to leave him sixth overall, 10.7s down on Neuville.
Tänak’s M-Sport team-mate Pierre-Louis Loubet lies seventh overall, 15.2s off the lead.
