Kalle Rovanperä has pulled away from Mārtiņš Sesks in the fight for the lead at Rally Latvia, holding the home hero to a 15.7-second deficit after Friday.
After the morning loop of stages, Rovanperä had just a 3.2s advantage over Sesks who took his first pair of WRC stage wins to keep the pressure on the world champion. But Rovanperä flexed his muscles as the day progressed.
Although he didn’t win the stage, Rovanperä eked out his lead by half a second on the super-short Milzkalne test that opened the loop, with tire strategy beginning to become a factor.
Sesks, along with his M-Sport team-mates and third-placed Sébastien Ogier, took just one spare tire for the four-stage loop, while the rest (including Rovanperä) took two.
Sesks didn't add any more stage wins on Friday afternoon but he did strengthen his hold on second place
Rovanperä commented after SS5: “For sure on this kind of flowy stage, taking two spares you can feel a bit weight, but everybody seems to have different tire plans this afternoon so let’s see how it works.”
The Toyota driver was feeling more confident at the end of SS6, admitting his decision to take four softs and two hards was “probably quite a good choice” and it showed in the stage time, which was 3.5s faster than Sesks’ effort.
That gave Rovanperä a 7.2s advantage with two fresh, unrepeated stages left to complete the loop. And the Finn was in no mood to let off the gas pedal, adding another 1.7s to his lead on SS7 before stealing another 6.8s from Sesks on the final test.
“It was the first stage today that I felt inside the car that we were driving proper rally, so a good day,” Rovanperä said.
Sesks was just fourth fastest on that final test, but he was still happy with his Friday to be sandwiched between two world champions.
“This one [last stage] was a nightmare because we basically had no tires, but it’s amazing, it’s so emotional today. The next two days will be as well.”
Ogier lies third on his first fast gravel rally since 2021 and kept Sesks in his sights – trailing the home hero by just 5.9s overnight.
Evans is at least ahead of championship leader Thierry Neuville – but was unable to keep pace with the top six
Elfyn Evans confessed at the end of the first stage that he had “no clue where we are”, which is perhaps just as well as he lost sixth position to Adrien Fourmaux on SS5 – despite Fourmaux surviving a hairy wide moment.
But Fourmaux wasn’t interested in Evans; instead, his eyes were firmly fixed forwards.
“I’m trying to catch Tänak and Taka, that’s my target – the two cars ahead,” Fourmaux said after SS7.
While that seemed like an ambitious target, Takamoto Katsuta then completed the penultimate stage and dropped 3.1s to Fourmaux, leaving him just 1.6s ahead after admitting to needing to save his soft tires.
But Katsuta responded expertly on the final stage, defeating Fourmaux by 3.7s to lead him by 5.3s. The biggest loser however was Ott Tänak who dropped two places from fourth to sixth.
For his part, Tänak reported that he lost the brakes on the penultimate stage of the day, but with his higher start position, he was powerless to defend against Fourmaux and Katsuta’s respective pushes.
Overall, the 2019 world champion is 0.3s adrift of Fourmaux.
Thierry Neuville continued to struggle as the first car on the road, ending Friday down in ninth place after a small overshoot or two. Worryingly for the Belgian, because (unusually) no Rally1 drivers retired on Friday he will again be forced to run up the front of the field on Saturday.
Banging the steering wheel as he crossed the stop-line of the final stage preceded a punchy stage-end interview.
Thierry Neuville appeared powerless to avoid finishing the day propping up the rear – only Lappi slowing down on the final stage avoided him staying rooted to the bottom of the Rally1 classification
“I tried to catch at least one position, but yeah… I don’t know what to say,” began an unimpressed Neuville.
“Obviously the strategy to win a championship is not the same now, rallying has changed a lot. Obviously now things like doing part seasons is much more fun and a bigger benefit for everything. Something to think about.”
Esapekka Lappi won in Latvia when it was a winter event in the European Rally Championship 10 years ago, but there has been no such joy so far this weekend.
The Finn’s miserable run was typified by the front-right tire coming off the rim on the afternoon’s first stage – “On a junction, [there was a] massive hole in the middle of a 90-left and [the tire came] straight out of the rim,” he explained – but generally he was still just struggling for confidence and thereby speed.
“I guess [the problem] is between the steering wheel and the seat – it might be the only solution,” said a fed-up Lappi.
“I don’t know what I should do at the moment, I’m fully lost.”
A particularly poor final stage time dropped Lappi two places to 10th as he appeared to slow early before the finish line. That means he will run first on the road tomorrow – crucially for Hyundai, ahead of his team-mate Neuville.
Grégoire Munster flirted with disaster on the second stage of the loop when he ran deep into a slow right-hander and dropped his rear wheels into the road-side ditch.
“I almost went off in a slow right-hand corner in third gear, so lost a bit of time,” he said, before explaining a bizarre incident on the road section prior.
Munster took over cameraman duties for DirtFish during one road section – then fended off Neuville for eighth once back in the car
“We could have lost a lot less time if we hadn’t told Thierry his boot was open before the stage, but that wouldn’t have been very sporting and that’s not how we are.”
In the end, Munster completed Friday 13.1s ahead of Neuville despite carrying no hybrid for two stages – a problem he didn’t reveal until the end of the last stage.
Oliver Solberg maintained his WRC2 lead throughout Friday afternoon to lead the category by 31.1s heading into Saturday.
The Škoda driver won all but one of the day’s seven stages to keep ERC regular Mikko Heikkilä at bay. Sami Pajari now occupies a podium position after Josh McErlean, who was third, went off on SS6 at the same place that nearly caught Munster.
“Three-quarters of the way through we just lost the braking and slid into the ditch on our side,” the Irishman said.
“It’s a big shame because we were in the fight and now we’ve lost over a minute, but lucky to still be here.”
