The rain came to wet the bottom of the 24.35 kilometer Peipsiaare 2, the first special stage of today’s afternoon lap at Rally Estonia, and changed the tables considerably.
Kalle Rovanpera, forced to open all the day’s special stages due to his first place in the overall standings in the Drivers’ World Championship, suddenly found himself in an advantage situation. He was able to take advantage of the sometimes muddy ground to get the better of his direct rivals for the success of the rally.
However, the reigning world champion was good at exploiting the situation, bringing his delay from the top of the general classification from 6″8 to just 2″1.
Thierry Neuville struggled especially in the last sector of the special, the muddy one. Perhaps also due to the chosen set-up of his i20 N Rally1, which seems to work well in the dry but not in the mud.
In this special Esapekka Lappi was the fastest driver among those lined up by Hyundai Motorsport thanks to the second time of the special, 2″1 behind Rovanpera. However, this allowed the Finn to get even closer to the third position in the general standings, still in the hands of Elfyn Evans.
Splendid performance for Teemu Suninen, fourth on a par with Neuville in this round although he lost a couple of seconds in the fight for third place.
Instead, Pierre-Louis Loubet earned a position by climbing from seventh to sixth place. Takamoto Katsuta was very slow, losing over 18 seconds to Rovanpera. Loubet, on the other hand, lost 8 less, managing to overtake the Japanese of Toyota Racing who was having a crisis of confidence with the car.
Everything changes also in WRC2, with leader Oliver Solberg forced to retire. The Norwegian from the Monster Skoda team hit something – a not so significant impact, at least in appearance – damaging the right rear suspension. This gave the go-ahead to Andreas Mikkelsen, the new category leader with an 8″5 lead over his teammate Sami Pajari.
The young Finn of the TokSport team started the afternoon lap well by winning the race and reducing his delay from what is now the first class position. Also noteworthy are some significant power steering issues on Emil Lindholm’s Hyundai i20 N Rally2. The Finn found himself forced to slow down due to this problem, which is intermittent for now.
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