Kalle Rovanperä won Rally Latvia’s first-ever stage in the World Rally Championship, beating Thierry Neuville and Sébastien Ogier on Thursday night’s superspecial to establish a 2.4-second lead.
At 6.9 miles, the Biķernieki Track stage was lengthy for a superspecial, and utilized the circuit used in the World Rallycross Championship from 2016-22 on the outskirts of Riga.
So while gaps tend to be tight after Thursday evening stages, the full Rally1 field is already split by 11.0s ahead of Friday’s high-speed gravel action with tire choice and road position coming into play.
Softs proved to be the order of the day, but the M-Sport cars of Adrien Fourmaux and Grégoire Munster, as well as the Hyundais of Ott Tänak and Esapekka Lappi, opted for four hard-compound Pirellis.
Despite a small overshoot Tänak was the fastest of the hard-shot runners, but 5.9s off the stage-winning time set by Rovanperä.
All four Toyotas elected to take soft tires and it paid off. Rovanperä has tried his hand at circuit racing this season alongside his part-time WRC commitments and looked at home on the track in his rally car too.
Despite fearing running as early as fourth car on the road would cost him time as the stage rubbered in, Rovanperä set the pace – drawing praise from team-mate Elfyn Evans who was fifth fastest.
“It looks like Kalle had a good run,” Evans commented, dropping 3.9s.
Sébastien Ogier was second, setting an identical time to Hyundai driver Thierry Neuville who went against his team-mates in choosing a mix of three soft and two hard compound tires.
“It’s not too bad with the tire choice we had,” Neuville said. “We saw that the softs seemed to work quite well – nobody really knew before the start of the stage, I was hesitating so we went for a mix.”
Ogier added: “I didn’t drive perfectly, with a lot of movement on the tire it’s not easy to be perfect but it’s fine. The real start is tomorrow.”
Sesks is the driver most of the local fans came to see – andhe got the loudest cheers during the Biķernieki superspecial
Home hero Mārtiņš Sesks had initially looked like he was going to challenge Rovanperä for the stage win, but eventually wound up fourth fastest, 2.9s off the pace.
“It was amazing!” Sesks exclaimed. “I think we lost a bit on the second lap with the soft tire. I was wide a few places for sure but I think everyone loved that.”
Takamoto Katsuta was sixth quickest ahead of the spate of rueful drivers on hard tires.
“We tried to be very clever with the tire choice but we were very, very wrong – some wrong information we got,” seventh-placed Tänak said.
Team-mate Lappi meanwhile labeled his ninth-fastest time a “disappointment”, feeling his choice of hard tires should have been correct but frustrated he wasn’t able to use it.
“I wanted to believe the temperature is high enough to use the hard,” he said, “but I couldn’t use it properly it seems.”
Lappi was first of the hard runners and suffered badly for his tire choice, dropping a double-digit time gap to the rally leader
Lappi was 4.7s slower than Tänak, with Fourmaux’s M-Sport Ford splitting the two Hyundais in eighth overall. His team-mate Munster was the slowest of the Rally1 runners in 10th overall, and also regretted his decision to run four hard-compound Pirellis on his Ford Puma Rally1.
“We don’t have the right tire for this,” Munster said, “so it’s really tricky as you try to be efficient but then you feel really slow. But the moment you get a bit sideways, you are not moving forward.”
Oliver Solberg emerged the early WRC2 leader with a strong drive in his Škoda Fabia RS Rally2, eclipsing Sami Pajari, his expected rival for victory, by 10.2s.
“It was a clean, good run – bit of rallycross style I enjoyed it,” Solberg said. “Those 10.2s for tomorrow, I need them!”
Roberto Daprà was second fastest but still 7.6s shy of Solberg, while Emil Lindholm was third. But there was disaster for Lindholm’s Hyundai team-mate Teemu Suninen who lost his power-steering, and with no overnight service or midday tomorrow, he’ll be forced to contest all of Friday’s stages with the problem.
