Sami Pajari leads Rally Estonia at Friday’s halfway point, winning all three of the event’s stages so far.
Equal quickest with championship leader Elfyn Evans on shakedown earlier on Friday morning, Pajari carried that promise into the competitive element of the event – winning SS1 Raanitsa by 2.4 seconds.
Quickest again on SS2 Karaski, this time by 0.3s, Pajari also set the pace on SS3 Kanepi by 0.8s to remain unbeaten at Rally Estonia so far.
That’s earned the Finn a lead of 4.1s over Toyota team-mate Oliver Solberg as crews head for the tire fitting zone.
“It feels really good,” Pajari adimitted. “I’m really enjoying. It’s super amazing to drive in this condition with this kind of car, so trying to enjoy it – I recommend this to anyone. Anyway, it’s very soon in the rally.”
Solberg won last year’s Rally Estonia – his first win in the WRC – but hasn’t been able to replicate that special feeling so far in 2026.
“The driving is not good, the feeling is not good, so I need to improve. I’m not comfortable like last year, anyway,” he said.
Solberg is in pursuit of Pajari, but hasn't got the killer feeling yet
Solberg did move ahead of Hyundai’s Adrien Fourmaux on SS2 however; the Hyundai driver getting crossed up over a jump and running into the undergrowrth before continuing.
“The car went the wrong way on the takeoff,” Fourmaux said. “There was Tarmac at the takeoff, the car got upset and it went right [when the road went left] so I’m lucky there was nothing in the ditch.”
Fourmaux ended the loop 0.8s behind Solberg, 4.9s off the lead.
Hyundai team-mate Thierry Neuville is fourth, 11.1s adrift of first place as he struggled to find confidence from his i20.
“We are not biting the ground, we are just skating on top,” he said. “We don’t get the lateral grip to load the car through the corner.”
Neuville also encountered a bizzare issue on SS3.
“I had sticky feet,” he said. “I was probably working on melting Tarmac and I was sticking to the pedals all the time. Strange feeling but we are here.”
World champion Sébastien Ogier completes the top five, 3.5s behind Neuville but aware there are 15 stages still to go.
“It’s just the beginning of the race,” said Ogier. “We need to do our best and we’ll see tonight where we are.”
Josh McErlean nipped ahead of Takamoto Katsuta into sixth place on the final stage of the loop, ahead of the Toyota by 1.1s. The returning Esapekka Lappi is eighth and 26.7s off the lead despite a good road position – confused as to why he’s lacking pace.
Road sweeper Evans is 0.8s behind Lappi and ninth overall ahead of M-Sport’s Mãrtiņš Sesks and Jon Armstrong who both ran into trouble.
Sesks’ drama occurred before the rally even began, as a collision with an anti-cut device wrecked his Puma’s steering and damaged the underside of the car, leaving the mechanics with a big job to do before SS1.
The car was repaired but the Latvian took a 20s penalty for leaving service two minutes late.
Without that, he’d have been fourth overall and 8.8s off the lead.
“The only thing we can do is keep pushing,” said Sesks. “You know a cat when it’s a corner? It has nothing else to do but bite.”
Team-mate Armstrong is 13.1s adrift after losing 31s on the opening test due to a front-left puncture, sustained via an awkward landing on a jump.
“We were a little bit wide but we didn’t hit anything and I think it’s just the landing on the jump on one tire has given us a puncture,” Armstrong said. “Not much we can do. It wasn’t too far to come to the end but I hope we haven’t lost too much aero.”
The Irishman’s mood improved after SS2 as Armstrong and co-driver Shane Byrne used the car’s radiator blanking to fashion a fix to the broken front-left aero, with attention turning to showing speed for the rest of Friday with a high road position likely on Saturday.
Armstrong was sixth quickest on SS2 and eighth fastest on SS3.
“Maybe we’ll get a job designing rally cars in the future,” he laughed.
