Sami Pajari is one day away from a maiden World Rally Championship victory, leading Rally Estonia by 25 seconds on Saturday evening.
The Toyota driver has led round nine of the season ever since the first stage, dominating Friday’s opening leg by winning all seven of the day’s stages.
Pajari carried that momentum into Saturday, winning the first pass of both Peipsiääre and Mustvee before Oliver Solberg replied with two stage wins on the repeat pass.
Pajari was back to his stage-winning best in the afternoon though, setting the pace on three of the five stages to distance himself from second-placed Solberg.
For his part, last year’s Estonia winner felt he made an “optimistic” tire choice in the afternoon by choosing full softs, while Pajari took two hards in his package.
“The morning was much more positive than yesterday,” Solberg reflected.
“I wish we had that feeling yesterday, but the commitment and risk taking is still not there and that’s what I need to beat Sami – he’s been driving extremely well.
“I’m just trying to do the best I can with the confidence I have at the moment.”
Pajari added: “It was a good day. It’s never meant to be easy but still we are somehow quite comfortable with the lead. There’s many kilometers to do as well tomorrow, so it’s not too straightforward.
“On the road section there was a really cool fan with a poster which said ‘Sami, don’t listen to Marko [Salminen, co-driver’, send it!’ So I’m trying to follow that.”
Adrien Fourmaux completes the overnight top-three for Hyundai, a mere 1.9s ahead of team-mate Thierry Neuville who took Hyundai’s only stage win of the weekend so far on SS15.
That helped him pull over half a minute clear of world champion Sébastien Ogier, who is enjoying the rally but felt frustrated that things were “mathematical” with stage times progressively getting quicker with each competing car.
Team-mate Elfyn Evans is sixth ahead of M-Sport’s Mãrtiņš Sesks, Esapekka Lappi – who had a wild off-road moment on the first stage of the afternoon – and Jon Armstrong.
Robert Virves is 10th overall, leading WRC2 by 10.1s ahead of Roope Korhonen. Teemu Suninen is third, 0.8s behind Korhonen, while Toyota junior Jaspar Vaher’s run ended on the first stage of the day after an 8G impact.
