Sébastien Ogier leads the Super Sunday standings from Ott Tänak halfway through the final day of Rally Latvia, as Toyota looks to inflict further damage on Hyundai in the manufacturers’ championship.
Kalle Rovanperä holds a commanding rally lead of 40.3 seconds 18 stages into the 20-test event, while Ogier began pulling clear of Mārtiņš Sesks in their fight for second overall, meaning all attention is on the bonus points up for grabs on Sunday.
Typically, Hyundai and its two World Rally Championship challengers Tänak and Thierry Neuville have been strongest on Sundays, but Toyota’s two part-time world champions have seized the initiative in Lativa.
Running as the last two cars on the road, thus having the best of the conditions, Ogier won the first test by 1.4s over Rovanperä. But Tänak responded on SS18 by topping the times and therefore leaping ahead of Rovanperä who felt his stage was “s***”.
“It’s not so easy, we have a big gap so we don’t want to mess up anything with the win,” said the rally leader, “but this year the Sunday is so important for the team points.”
Ogier’s Super Sunday lead is just 0.9s over Tänak, with Rovanperä 2.2s adrift.
“The cleaning effect is good, so we are using it,” Ogier said.
Tänak is the highest placed of the championship contenders in third with Elfyn Evans and Neuville fourth and sixth respectively.
Evans and Neuville set exactly the same time on the opening Krogzemji test, a 9m25.9s, but Evans felt like he “gave a few easy seconds away” with Neuville describing his performance as “flat out”.
As it stands Neuville will take only five points away from Latvia despite his best efforts
Running two cars after Neuville on the road, Evans had an advantage in terms of road position and nicked ahead after SS18 Mazilmāja, outpacing Neuville by 3.7s.
“In conditions like this, there’s no way,” a frustrated Neuville said. “There’s nothing we can do.”
Neuville is also in danger of losing another spot to M-Sport’s Adrien Fourmaux in the Super Sunday classification – the Frenchman just 0.1s behind Neuville, and with more in reserve having run wide and lost a couple of seconds on SS18.
As he is on the overall leaderboard, Sesks is also the leading M-Sport driver on Super Sunday in fifth place – 0.4s adrift of Evans.
Sesks sent it over the jump in a quarry section of SS17, admitting “in a Rally2 car it’s flat, in a Rally1… it’s probably not!” He was less spectacular on SS18, but made a “big, big mistake” where he ran wide at a junction and “lost many seconds”.
In the overall classification, there has been no change since the end of Saturday: Rovanperä leads from Ogier, Sesks, Tänak, Fourmaux, Evans, Takamoto Katsuta, Neuville, Esapekka Lappi and Grégoire Munster.
