Ott Tänak and Kalle Rovanperä shared the fastest time on Rally Finland for the second time this weekend, keeping their battle for the win at a stalemate.
The famous Ruuhimäki stage ran as SS20 of 22 of this year’s Rally Finland and will be repeated later on as the points-paying powerstage.
But it’s the 25 points for victory rather than the bonus ones on offer for SS22 that are inspiring Tänak and Rovanperä to push so hard on Sunday morning.
Tänak made a massive statement of intent on Sunday’s opening Oittila stage, outpacing Rovanperä by 1.9 seconds, to craft a 10.3s lead.
Rovanperä however was faster in the opening split of SS20, but Tänak drew level in the second and the pair set the exact same stage time of 5m22.9s.
It’s a worrying situation for Rovanperä’s victory hopes, as he’s running out of miles to take any time out of Tänak. Could he go any quicker?
“Yeah I can,” he said, surprisingly.
“I can take the risk, I’m not willing to take it. If I take the crazy risk I can go a few seconds faster, then I have the same time as Ott so it doesn’t help me, just more risk for nothing.”
Aside from the scintillating scrap out front, the only other position that looked in doubt was the battle for seventh between M-Sport’s Gus Greensmith and Pierre-Louis Loubet.
But Greensmith was significantly faster on the previous Oittila stage, leaving Loubet feeling that his chances of making up position were “a bit dead” after SS20.
And sure enough, Greensmith was another six seconds faster than Loubet on Ruuhimäki to extend his overall advantage to 17.5s.
“I don’t know why this year but the jumps earlier in the stage were massive compared to last year,” Greensmith said.
“Last year they were easy flat and this one I almost jumped into the corner after, and every onboard I’ve ever watched nobody even gets close. So clearly the extra power is something I didn’t anticipate for one of the jumps.”
Greensmith was the quickest of M-Sport’s pride of Pumas on SS20 while Loubet was the slowest.
Thierry Neuville’s pace has been quietly impressive on Sunday morning. He finished best of the rest to the Tänak and Rovanperä show and repeated the feat on Ruuhimäki, edging fourth-placed Elfyn Evans by a tenth of a second.
“We’re just trying to get our eye in a bit for the powerstage,” said Evans, “but nothing crazy.”
Sixth-placed Takamoto Katsuta was fifth fastest on the stage, 1.9s down on Neuville after a couple of wild slides, but 0.6s faster than his Toyota colleague Esapekka Lappi who continues to hold the final podium position.
But Lappi did survive a slight scare over one of Ruuhimäki’s famous jumps as the rear squirrelled upon landing.
“Yeah the car is a bit on the soft side to gain some grip,” Lappi said. “Maybe it looks scary, but it’s all under control.”
