Sébastien Ogier took his first outright stage win of Rally Estonia but Ott Tänak remains in the lead, extending his advantage to 6.4 seconds over Hyundai team-mate Craig Breen.
The Frenchman set the joint-best time on Friday’s short opening stage, but couldn’t quite match the leading Hyundais once the rally headed to the forests on Saturday morning.
Ogier didn’t look overly happy with his SS5 run as he crossed the line, but he was 0.6s quicker than next-best Kalle Rovanperä and 0.7s up on Tänak to move into fourth.
Tänak wasn’t fazed however: ““It’s 0.7s, what do you mean what happened?” Tänak said when asked what had happened to cause him to lose time to Ogier.
Breen meanwhile continued to impress but could only manage the fifth fastest time on the 9.17-mile test, but put that down to “not sticking the neck out” as much as in previous stages.
Elfyn Evans had a disappointing run on Máeküla, dropping 6.1s to his Toyota team-mate Sébastien Ogier to usher the six-time world champion past in to fourth place in the rally.
Ogier’s also outpaced Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville by two seconds, who admitted he had “some small mistakes”. But Neuville’s advantage was sufficient to keep him ahead of Ogier in third by 2.7s.
It wasn’t a good stage for M-Sport’s Esapekka Lappi, who was overhauled by Toyota junior Takamoto Katsuta who was 5.9s quicker. The gap is now 4.3s in Katsuta’s favor.
“Pretty good so I’m pretty happy. I try to continue on the next stage,” Katsuta commented.
Toyota’s recovering Rovanperä – who had a puncture earlier in the rally – has slipped past Lappi too into seventh overall, and is now just 1.1s shy of Katsuta. Lappi is 9.9s ahead of his team-mate Teemu Suninen who admitted “there is some room to improve my driving”.
Pierre-Louis Loubet continues to have the measure over Gus Greensmith, outpacing Lappi on Máeküla to extend his gap over 11th placed Greensmith to exactly 20 seconds.
SS5 times
1 Ogier (Toyota) 7m46.2s
2 Rovanperä (Toyota) +0.6s
3 Tänak (Hyundai) +0.7s
4 Neuville (Hyundai) +2.0s
5 Breen (Hyundai) +2.6s
6 Katsuta (Toyota) +5.5s
Leading positions after SS5
1 Tänak (Hyundai) 32m20.0s
2 Breen (Hyundai) +6.4s
3 Neuville (Hyundai) +12.8s
4 Ogier (Toyota) +15.5s
5 Evans (Toyota) +17.4s
6 Katsuta (Toyota) +32.2s
7 Rovanperä (Toyota) +33.3s
8 Lappi (M-Sport Ford) +36.5s
9 Suninen (M-Sport Ford) +46.4s
10 Loubet (2C Competition Hyundai) +1m01.7s
