Ott Tänak leads Rally Estonia on the World Rally Championship’s first loop of stages in almost six months, ahead of Hyundai team-mates Craig Breen and Thierry Neuville.
Reigning champion Tänak wasn’t quite as untouchable as his rivals had feared however, winning just two of Saturday morning’s five forest tests and didn’t draw first blood; that accolade going the way of Toyota’s teenager Kalle Rovanperä who led after SS2.
However Rovanperä’s day would soon curtail, with a delaminating tire and consequent loss of some rear-right aero on his Toyota Yaris WRC on the very next test pegged him back and dropped him to eighth. The Finn has recovered to sit sixth overall but it’s been a morning of what might have been.
Tänak however was on course to overhaul Rovanperä anyway on SS3 such was his pace through the early splits, but he’s been challenged hard by fellow Hyundai pilot Breen who is contesting his fifth Rally Estonia this weekend.
Breen was second on SS2 with Tänak down in fourth, but since being overhauled on SS3 Breen hasn’t quite been able to get on top of his team-mate despite coming within 0.1 seconds of his stage time on SS4.
After SS6 and Friday’s morning loop, Tänak’s lead stands at 6.8s over Breen with Neuville 11.1s off the pace; 4.3s behind Breen.
“I’d prefer to be a little bit quicker on these last couple not exactly in the same rhythm as this morning but OK we have to be realistic, it’s not a bad start to the rally at all,” Breen said at the end of SS6.
Neuville had trailed both Toyota Yaris WRCs of Elfyn Evans and joint overnight rally leader Sébastien Ogier but surged ahead on SS4 with a strong stage time.
Although he lost two seconds to stage winner Ogier on SS5, Neuville completed the loop-concluding Elva test fastest of all, 1.7s quicker than Ogier to hold a 4.4s advantage over the championship leader.
But Neuville wasn’t “100% satisfied”. He said: “[We’re] missing a little bit of confidence still especially in the fast but OK we tried our best. We have to be realistic that Ott is much more known to this type of road so he can go immediately faster than us but we are in the fight for a podium and that’s important.”
Evans had been third and ahead of Ogier after Friday’s third stage before he lost 6.1s on SS5. He had a similarly poor run on Elva to head to service 7.6s down on team-mate Ogier and 23.1s adrift of Tänak’s lead.
Esapekka Lappi was the man that shared the rally lead with Ogier after Friday’s Tartu superspecial but despite pushing to the best of his ability, he hasn’t been able to recapture that form out in the forests.
The M-Sport pilot found himself embroiled in a scrap with the impressive Takamoto Katsuta driving a fourth Toyota Yaris WRC, but made Katsuta’s job much easier when he braked too late and overshot a junction on the Elva stage that ended the loop.
Katsuta therefore pulled 11.8s clear, but was overhauled by Rovanperä on the stage to drop to seventh, three seconds adrift. Lappi is eighth, 6.9s ahead of team-mate Teemu Suninen.
Pierre-Louis Loubet – on his WRC Rally1 debut – and Gus Greensmith are 10th and 11th overall. Loubet had made a steady start but was on course for a strong time on Saturday morning’s final stage, only to overshoot the same corner that Lappi did and tap a concrete barrier with the front-right of his Hyundai.
Loubet’s error means Greensmith is now 13.4s behind. Greensmith will replace Ogier as the first car on the road in the afternoon with the road order switching to the reverse Rally1 classification as opposed to championship order.
Mads Østberg leads the WRC2 class by 16.5s despite a tire being knocked off the rim of his Citroën C3 R5 on Saturday’s second test.
First blood went to Hyundai’s Ole Christian Veiby but the Norwegian slammed into a hay bale on Saturday’s opener. He still won the stage but there were consequences from the incident and he lies sixth and last in class as a result.
Problems for Østberg and Veiby promoted Adrien Fourmaux to the head of the field, but the M-Sport man lost 25 seconds with a puncture of his own on SS6 Elva to slip down to fourth, behind Nikolay Gryazin – who had a high-speed spin on SS2 – and Pontus Tidemand.
Photo: Jarek Jõepera
Eyvind Brynildsen is a lonely fifth in his Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo.
Oliver Solberg heads the WRC3 class in his Volkswagen Polo GTI R5, holding an 11.7s advantage over Egon Kaur with triple European Rally Champion Kajetan Kajetanowicz in third.
Local hero Kaur won the first stage and held on to the lead on the second despite a blinding time from Kajetanowicz who went 6.5s faster than anyone else.
But the Škoda driver lost the lead to Solberg, who went fastest on SS4, but has stayed in touch.
Jari Huttunen had been expected to fly but the Hyundai driver is 36.2s away from Solberg’s Polo. American pilot Sean Johnston is a solid 11th on his WRC3 debut.
Championship leader Tom Kristensson had lead the Junior WRC field after the opening test but his Ford Fiesta Rally4 stopped after a big jump on the following test, ruling him out for the day.
That paved the path clear for Mārtiņš Sesks but he was soon overhauled by Estonian and JWRC newcomer Robert Virves who snatched the lead on SS4.
His countryman Ken Torn then went on a charge of his own to demote Sesks to third, and trails leader Virves by just 1.3s.
Ruairi Bell – co-driven by British Rally Champion Matt Edwards – is fifth behind Sami Pajari, who is nursing a damaged steering rod.
SS6 times
1 Neuville (Hyundai) 6m05.1s
2 Rovanperä (Toyota) +0.7s
3 Ogier (Toyota) +1.7s
4 Tänak (Hyundai) +1.7s
5 Breen (Hyundai) +2.1s
6 Katsuta (Toyota) +4.8s
Leading positions after SS6
1 Tänak (Hyundai) 38m26.8s
2 Breen (Hyundai) +6.8s
3 Neuville (Hyundai) +11.1s
4 Ogier (Toyota) +15.5s
5 Evans (Toyota) +23.1s
6 Rovanperä (Toyota) +32.3s
7 Katsuta (Toyota) +35.3s
8 Lappi (M-Sport Ford) +47.1s
9 Suninen (M-Sport Ford) +54.0s
10 Loubet (2C Competition Hyundai) +1m18.6s
