Kalle Rovanperä has responded to Elfyn Evans’ stage-winning space on Saturday morning of Rally Estonia, outgunning his Toyota team-mate by four tenths on SS11.
Neither Evans nor Rovanperä were happy with their performance on the Elva stage that kickstarted Saturday, but Evans went 0.6 seconds faster to trim Rovanperä’s lead to 11.1s.
But after the second stage of the day, Mäeküla, Rovanperä claimed back two thirds of that to bump his lead, which had stood at 11.7s overnight, back to 11.5s; even if he found the stage “quite difficult” and “tricky overall”.
Things weren’t perfect for Evans either: “It was not a perfect run in here OK,” he said, the air scoop on the left-hand-side of his Toyota missing.
Esapekka Lappi lost 2.5s to Thierry Neuville behind him on Saturday morning’s opener, but hit back immediately on Mäeküla to nick 2.3s back – making his fourth position more secure with a buffer of 6.8s.
“Always you can improve, but no big mistakes,” Lappi said.
Neuville was visibly trying in his Hyundai, slapping a bank or two on what looked to be a white-knuckle run.
“I went a bit hard on some corners, hitting the bank here and there,” said Neuville, “but at least it was fun!”
Team-mate Ott Tänak’s pace has remained decent on Saturday as he set the third fastest time to hold onto the same position overall.
In a mirror image to Saturday morning’s opener, Adrien Fourmaux had been outpacing Takamoto Katsuta through the early splits of SS11 only to lose out come the finish.
The M-Sport driver gave up half a second to Katsuta’s Toyota, but still remains ahead in sixth place – 1.1s to the good.
“We had a clean stage, we were quite happy,” Fourmaux declared.
Katsuta added: “I haven’t delivered my maximum yet, it’s step by step I’m trying to push. I didn’t take so much risks.”
Gus Greensmith and Pierre-Louis Loubet remain rooted in eighth and ninth but were closely matched in their Pumas on Mäeküla – Greensmith edging Loubet by 0.5s.
