Saturday in Estonia was a long day – nine stages and 150km of flat out racing that saw Sami Pajari and Marko Salminen extend their lead over Oliver Solberg and Elliot Edmondson from 14.7 seconds to 25 seconds with two stages and just under 50km of stage mileage remaining.
Pajari picked up where he left off on Friday, banking the fastest time on the opening two stages before Solberg fought back with two stage wins ahead of the midday service break.
Pajari slammed the door shut on Solberg by winning three stages on the bounce after the service break;
“It’s not easy, it’s never meant to be easy, but still we are somehow quite comfortable with the lead, but it’s anyway quite many kilometres to do as well tomorrow, so it’s not too straightforward, but there was on the road section one fan with a really cool poster, which said: “Sami, don’t listen to Marko, send it.” So I’m trying to follow that,” Pajari said, summing up his day.
The Toyota Gazoo Racing battle was paused when Thierry Neuville took his and Hyundai’s first stage win of the weekend on SS15 as he chased his teammate Adrien Fourmaux in a frenetic inter-team fight over the final step of the podium.
Fourmaux was living on the edge and hit an anti-cut device which miraculously caused no damage other than cosmetic. “I’m quite happy with the day. We had some tyre issues this morning, puncture, etc., so that was quite nice to manage it. And this afternoon, we had quite a lot of tyre wear to repair, but overall, I’m quite pleased with the day. It’s a shame the time in the previous stage, but I tried my best.
Behind Neuville, Sebastien Ogier and Vincent Landais had a steady drive in fifth place, ending the day half a minute ahead of the championship leaders Elfyn Evans and Scott Martin. The Welshman, running third on the road, climbed from ninth to sixth after stage nine after an epic drive running third on the road.
Martins Sesks and Renars Francis ended seventh and the top M-Sport Ford crew after a strong run recovering from a puncture in stage nine, which blunted their challenge over the remaining stages of the morning loop, as he couldn’t afford another tyre issue with no spares left.
The Latvian had a wild moment in stage 15 when he dropped the rear of his Puma off the edge of the road, the car rearing up on to two wheels and a near roll.
Esapekka Lappi and Enni Malkonen ended eighth overall, frustrated by his lack of pace with Jon Armstrong and Shayne Byrne taking ninth overall; despite setting competitive times relative to this peers, the fast nature of the stages meant little progress could be made to recover the time lost on Friday.
Josh McErlean and Eoin Treacy suffered a mechanical failure on the first stage of the day but will return for Sunday’s stages.
The WRC2 fight was intense; although Estonian Robert Virves and co-driver Jakko Viila led throughout the day, their lead was never comfortable, ranging from a low of 2.7 seconds to 10.1 by the end of the day.
The fight over second raged between Teemu Suninen and Roope Korhonen with three changes in the overall ranking. Suninen started the day in second but dropped to third place over the next four stages before fighting back to take second by 0.8 seconds after SS13.
Korhonen re-took second position on the day’s penultimate stage and held a 0.8 second lead heading into Sunday’s finale.
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