Oliver Solberg continued his domination of WRC Delfi Rally Estonia on Saturday, increasing his overnight lead to 21.1 seconds after winning three stages on the fly on Saturday morning.
His Friday performance was helped by a favourable road position, but it was a level playing field on Saturday with three drivers boasting four championships between them, trying to hunt him down to no avail.
Another fastest time on stage 15 kept his confidence high while conceding a few tenths here and there after he claimed he would wind his speed down a bit.
“It’s been an absolutely amazing day,” said Solberg, whose father Petter was the 2003 world champion. “Really consistent speed, no mistakes, just trying to keep it clean. It wasn’t the plan to extend the gap, but hey, it’s fantastic.
“I’m just doing my thing and trying to do every stage as good as I can and as clean as I can with no mistakes, and today there have been no mistakes. They are pushing so hard behind, and I can feel it – it’s tense.”
Behind the flying Toyota, it was all out war between Hyundai’s Ott Tanak and Thierry Neuville as they fought over second position overall. They traded places six times during the day, with the margin between them as close as 0.1 seconds after stage 13.
A ‘suggestion’ from Hyundai’s bosses that it was critically important to bring both cars home in second and third to maximize their Manufacturers’ points saw Neuville lose a little confidence, leaving Tanak four seconds ahead of his teammate at the end of play.
Kalle Rovanperä holds fourth in no-man’s land, too far behind the Hyundais and sufficiently ahead of fifth placed Adrien Fourmaux to gain or lose any positions in the standings. Rovanperä wrung his Toyota’s neck, and tried numerous changes during the day to improve matters but admitted he and Toyota Gazoo Racing were out of options to find more speed.
Fourmaux had a steady run in the third i20 N, successfully absorbing Takamoto Katsuta’s pressure to leave the Japanese Toyota driver trailing by 8.6 seconds in fifth and sixth respectively.
Elfyn Evans was expected to challenge Katsuta and Fourmaux, given his more favourable position of fifth on the road, but he languished in seventh place and like his teammate, simply lacked pace across the longest day of the rally. Not only did he fail to make any progress climbing up the leader board, but he also dropped a couple of seconds further back.
Sami Pajari ended eighth overall, 34 seconds ahead of M-Sport Ford’s leading Puma in the hands of Martins Sesks. Josh McErlean rounded out the top ten with Grégoire Munster languishing in last in the Rally1 class after spending Saturday running first on the road.
Robert Virves continues to lead in WRC2 with a comfortable margin of 26.5 seconds over his fellow Estonian Georg Linnamäe.
Three stages and 60km remain for Sunday, with the possibility of rain at roughly the time the Wolf Power Stage is scheduled to start…
