Ott Tänak has laid down a huge marker in the battle to win Rally Finland, beating Kalle Rovanperä on Sunday morning’s opener by almost two seconds.
After two flat-out days of rallying in the Finnish forests, 8.4 seconds is all that split the leading Hyundai and Toyota.
The opening stage of the day, Oittila, was always likely to be a hugely important one as it was a chance for either driver to make a statement: Tänak that he wasn’t going to surrender the win and Rovanperä that he was coming to steal it.
The two were roughly half a second per kilometer quicker than anybody else, but Tänak was going even faster than Rovanperä.
The championship leader arrived to the end of the stage, and learned that Tänak had gone half a second faster in the opening split.
“Yeah,” Rovanperä said, shrugging his shoulder, “there is not much that I can do more.
“I think the small road is cleaning quite a lot, there was a lot of lines helping us but it’s not easy.
“I tried to be fast but it was not the perfect stage from me, I think Ott knows how to do it very well.”
In the end, Tänak’s time was 1.9s superior to Rovanperä’s, earning Tänak a 10.3s lead with three stages left to run.
“That was definitely full gas,” he said. “Happy to be here, but it was much needed this morning. We need to keep a good pace, but it was much needed.”
Gus Greensmith and Pierre-Louis Loubet had been expected to fight tooth and nail for seventh place on Sunday, taking the gravitas of being the highest M-Sport Ford on the leaderboard.
But Greensmith killed Loubet on Oittila, going 7.3s faster to hold position by 11.5s.
“I don’t know why but I have no grip at all, it’s very strange,” said Loubet. “I think the car is too stiff, it’s not good at all.”
“I said exactly the same thing, no grip,” added Greensmith, when made aware that Loubet had struggled for traction.
“I felt like I was stopped in some places, not going forward, not going anywhere.”
But encouraged that he’d taken a good amount of time from his rival, Greensmith admitted: “Yeah it’s a good start, good start.”
Craig Breen restarted as first car on the road on Sunday on a confidence-building exercise following his accident on Saturday.
Despite feeling like the road would clean, he was fastest of the five M-Sport Ford drivers on the SS19.
Jari Huttunen was only 1.9s off Breen’s pace but seemed to be encountering the same intermittent power-steering as he was on Saturday though.
“It feels nice but power-steering again, it’s not nice,” he said.
There were no histrionics from Thierry Neuville or Takamoto Katsuta on Sunday’s opener, who hold fifth and sixth overall.
Neuville was quicker than fourth-placed Elfyn Evans by 2.9s who admitted to “not taking any chances” on Sunday morning, given he’s safe in position and unlikely to make any gains on the podium places.
Esapekka Lappi holds the final of those spots and was eight tenths quicker than team-mate Evans.
