Kalle Rovanperä is one day away from breaking Finland’s seven-year wait for a Secto Rally Finland winner, as he leads Toyota team-mate Sébastien Ogier by a whopping 44.2 seconds.
Rovanperä has never won his home event before but headed into the afternoon with a handy 21.9s lead over Ogier. But his fellow world champion opted to drive safely as it “would be stupid” to try anything “crazy” with such big gaps.
But Rovanperä only knows one rhythm, and the 23-year-old destroyed everyone on the loop-opening Västilä by 6.7s – despite the rain falling heavier for him than others.
“I don’t know what the f*** I need to do about this rain,” he smiled.
Esapekka Lappi became the first driver to beat Rovanperä to a stage win all day on Päijälä 2 (albeit by just 0.5s), as Ogier backed off massively and lost over 11s after confessing he “could not drive any slower”.
Rovanperä then flexed his authority with a massive 4.8s stage win on Ouninpohja to round out the day.
“I needed to push a bit, I wanted to get a better feeling on this stage than in the morning,” he said.
“If I remember right my dad did a really good time on this stage some years so for sure I needed to do it also, so we can both drive well on this stage at least.”
Ogier was happy too: “It’s good, very good. A 1-2 for the team, now another big push tomorrow [for Super Sunday points]”.
Although Thierry Neuville has been frustrated – and at times scared – with the feeling aboard his Hyundai, things somewhat improved in the afternoon for the championship leader. Third place overnight is a huge boost for his World Rally Championship title campaign with both of his nearest rivals, Ott Tänak and Elfyn Evans, scoring zero points.
Tänak crashed on Friday and hasn’t been able to restart, while Evans slipped out of contention with a broken driveshaft on Saturday morning.
The Welshman had fallen from second to eighth, but then lost even more ground as he left service 16 minutes late and therefore incurred a 2m40s time penalty. Potential conversations about Toyota asking fifth-placed Sami Pajari to slow to let Evans through for extra championship points became a moot point.
Dropping to 18th place after the time penalty, Evans failed to score any points (while Neuville scooped 13) as reaching the all-important top-10 proved too great a task.
Adrien Fourmaux is fourth for M-Sport ahead of Pajari, while there was yet another puncture for Lappi who stopped to change one on Ouninpohja 1 and then, incredibly, again on Ouninpohja 2.
“The tire delaminated in fifth gear, like an explosion,” Lappi said.
Oliver Solberg’s WRC2 lead is now a healthy 47.6s as Jari-Matti Latvala lost over 20s with a spin on Ouninpohja. But there was drama for Robert Virves who had been third, but lost four minutes on Ouninpohja when the hood flipped up and obscured his windshield.
“I’m sitting so high so no chance to see out of the car,” Virves said. “I see only the ground, so I was quite lucky in a couple of places.”
Virves’ loss was Lauri Joona’s gain as the Finn moved up onto the provisional podium.
