Kalle Rovanperä and Jonne Halttunen completed their domination of the fourth round of the World Rally Championship, winning 15 of the 18 stages en route to building a 53.5 second cushion over the eight-time WRC champion Sebastian Ogier and Vincent Landais.
Elfyn Evans and Scott Martin were ranked third in all the metrics; overall, Super Sunday and Wolf Power Stage extending their advantage at the top of the championship leaderboard to 43 points.
Rovanperä won the Super Sunday standings and topped the Wolf Power Stage timesheets giving the Finnish Toyota Gazoo Racing crew the maximum haul of 35 points which elevates them to second overall in the title race, up from sixth in one fell swoop.
Takamoto Katsuta and Aaron Johnston made it a Toyota 1-2-3-4 exorcising the Japanese driver’s ghost from Safari Rally Kenya where he crashed out on the final stage.
Adrien Fourmaux and Alex Coria were the leading Hyundai team in fifth place, followed by Ott Tanak and Martin Järveoja in sixth and the luckless Thierry Neuville and Martijn Wydaeghe coming home in seventh after a puncture in the penultimate stage cost them a minute.
Josh McErlean and Eoin Treacy crashed their M-Sport Ford Puma out of the rally in the morning’s opening stage.
Yohan Rossel and Arnaud Dunand took their second victory of the year in WRC2 and lead the championship after fending off the very close attention of Alejandro Cachón and Borja Rozada in a thrilling battle.
Nikolay Gryazin and Konstantin Aleksandrov brought their Skoda home in third place.
Read Motorsport Monday for the full report. On Monday, obviously!
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