Hyundai’s home hero Ott Tänak leads the World Rally Championship’s first visit to Rally Estonia after Saturday’s stages, but has team-mate Craig Breen just 11.7 seconds in arrears.
Tänak kicked off the afternoon loop with a 6.8s lead over Breen, who in turn had 4.3s over the third Hyundai of Thierry Neuville.
But the marque’s sweep of the Rally Estonia podium positions lasted only for a morning, as Neuville got caught in one of the ruts that featured more prominently in the afternoon, was chucked out of the line and found something solid on the edge of the road to break his suspension against.
With Neuville out, it was Sébastien Ogier who inherited the final podium place, but Ogier erred on the side of caution after a tire got knocked off the rim and lost pressure on the afternoon’s opener.
Outbraking himself into a square left corner and stalling on Saturday’s final stage with a delaminated tire ensured Ogier would prove no threat to the Hyundai’s out front.
That released Breen, and the Irishman subsequently went on a push. His deficit to Tänak had crept up to 14.6s after two of the afternoon’s stages, but Breen whittled it down to 9.8s with two consecutive stage wins – his first for Hyundai – to give Tänak something to think about.
However disaster was the thought on Tänak’s mind, and he was keen to avoid it – backing off to a more cautious pace as the afternoon wound to a close. But Tänak did hit back at Breen on the day’s final stage, beating his team-mate by 1.9s
“I’ve been pushing some stages to make some gap,” reiterated Tänak.
“I know I can’t risk anything. I know I definitely need to come through if I want to fight the championship.”
Breen admitted “a podium would be very, very nice,”, and is looking set to achieve that goal as things stand, 17 seconds clear of Ogier (pictured below) in third.
Photo: Jaanus Ree/Red Bull Content Pool
Elfyn Evans drifted into the clutches of team-mate Kalle Rovanperä on Saturday afternoon, hampered when the rear-left tire of his Toyota Yaris WRC “popped” flat out in sixth gear on an asphalt stage towards the end of the loop’s first test.
Rovanperä then began to gnaw away at the time gap, narrowly closing in on Evans’ Yaris but saving the best until last.
On Saturday’s final stage SS11, Rovanperä won the test and beat Evans by 4.3s to crucially steal fourth place from him.
It was an impressive recovery following his delaminated tire on SS3 on Saturday morning that had demoted him to eighth. All three works Toyota’s are split by only 8.1s, with Ogier – left to bemoan his luck – just 6.2s ahead of Rovanperä.
The marque’s junior driver Takamoto Katsuta chalked up a strong performance on Saturday, despite feeling the need to apologize to co-driver Dan Barritt on the day’s penultimate stage with “some mistakes but not big ones”.
While he couldn’t quite match the pace of his team-mates, he was never far away and has a comfortable cushion over those behind, finishing Saturday a shade over a minute off the rally leader.
M-Sport had a lackluster day in Estonia with its three cars propping up the top 10. Esapekka Lappi is in an increasingly distant seventh place – over a minute and a half away from the rally lead – with team-mate Teemu Suninen 9.2s back in eighth.
“We are struggling for pace and we don’t know where. Normally we would know,” said a perplexed Suninen at the end of the day.
Pierre-Louis Loubet “really enjoyed” his first full day of WRC competition in a Rally1 car but admitted it was difficult for him at points. Nonetheless, the 2C Competition Hyundai driver holds a solid ninth place, just 24.3s adrift of the vastly more experienced Suninen.
Photo: Jaanus Ree/Red Bull Content Pool
Gus Greensmith is 10th overall in a third M-Sport Ford Fiesta WRC, suffering a stall at a hairpin on SS8 and a high-speed spin on the day’s final stage.
Greensmith had changed his pacenotes from the morning run and where he hadn’t got any air over a particular crest earlier in the day, all four wheels were airborne on the second pass and he jumped into the next corner, spinning his Fiesta but doing well to avoid the trees.
“It was the most exciting moment of the last six months, it’s better than being at home,” he joked.
Mads Østberg was untouchable on Saturday afternoon in WRC2, winning all five tests to establish a 37.8s lead over Hyundai driver Nikolay Gryazin.
The Russian struggled with a bonnet pin that came loose and, despite an attempted remedy with a cable tie, the problem never dissipated.
Nonetheless, Gryazin kept M-Sport’s Adrien Fourmaux at arm’s length, just 7.7s back in third.
Pontus Tidemand is another 12.9s in arrears with his Toksport Škoda team-mate Eyvind Brynildsen 30.1s adrift in fifth, 1m28.5s behind Østberg.
Oliver Solberg is in the lead of WRC3 but has been kept honest by local driver Egon Kaur – who battled Craig Breen for the WRC Academy title back in 2011.
Solberg and Kaur traded stage times throughout the afternoon, but Volkswagen Polo GTI R5 pilot Solberg did enough to extend his lead to 17.8s at the close of play.
Kajetan Kajetanowicz is third, 14.6s ahead of Jari Huttunen, with Marco Bulacia in fifth.
Local driver Robert Virves continues to lead Junior WRC on his category debut, holding an 11.2s advantage over Mārtiņš Sesks.
Ken Torn had been in the thick of the battle but was eliminated from the contest on SS9 when his Ford Fiesta Rally4 picked up a double puncture. With an insufficient number of spares, Torn called it quits and retired for the day.
As a result, it’s Sami Pajari who holds third, 37.1s adrift of Virves and 1m29.9s ahead of Ruairi Bell who successfully negotiated all 10 stages of the day with British Rally Champion Matt Edwards in the co-driver’s seat.
SS11 times
1 Rovanperä (Toyota) 5m58s
2 Tänak (Hyundai) +1.8s
3 Breen (Hyundai) +3.7s
4 Evans (Toyota) +4.3s
5 Katsuta (Toyota) +5.8s
Leading positions after SS11
1 Tänak (Hyundai) 1h15m08.4s
2 Breen (Hyundai) +11.7s
3 Ogier (Toyota) +28.7s
4 Rovanperä (Toyota) +34.9s
5 Evans (Toyota) +36.8s
6 Katsuta (Toyota) +1m01.9s
7 Lappi (M-Sport Ford) +1m41.7s
8 Suninen (M-Sport Ford) +1m50.9s
9 Loubet (2C Competition Hyundai) +2m15.2s
10 Greensmith (M-Sport Ford) +3m03.1s
