Toyota driver Kalle Rovanpera’s rivals were left trailing in the dust after the reigning WRC champ extended his Rally Latvia lead with a sublime second-leg drive on Saturday.
The 23-year-old Finn (above), who made his rallying debut in the Baltic nation more than 10 years ago, distanced the chasing pack through eight super-fast gravel stages near Liepaja to grow his advantage from 15.7s to 42.5s with just one day remaining of this eighth round of the FIA World Rally Championship.
It was a milestone morning for Rovanpera as he notched up the 200th stage win of his WRC career on the day’s second test, Snepele. His advantage built to 34.8s by the mid-leg service and that dominance continued into the afternoon, the Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 driver topping the timesheets on all but one stage.
Two-time WRC champ Rovanpera has elected to recharge his batteries and run only selected rallies in 2024. But if he completes the victory tomorrow it will be back to back-to-back wins for the part-timer, who put on a masterclass at last month’s Rally Poland after a late callup by his Toyota Gazoo Racing team.
Rovanpera’s Toyota teammate Sebastien Ogier made it a GR Yaris 1-2, with local hero Martins Sesks a close third on his first WRC start in a full-spec M-Sport Puma Rally1 hybrid machine, and only his second ever in the series’ top tier.
Eight-time champ Ogier, who’s also running only a part-time schedule in 2024, began the day 5.9s behind Sesks, but passed the 24-year-old Latvian on the overall leaderboard in the final stage of the morning. Luck was on the Frenchman’s side when he ran wide into a ditch on the morning’s penultimate test, plowing through the undergrowth before popping back onto the road unscathed.
Sesks, who ended the day just 4.7s behind Ogier, sits on the brink of a sensational podium in front of his enthusiastic home fans. Adding to the sense that we’re witnessing a new WRC star in the making, the two drivers ahead of him, plus Ott Tanak just behind, are all previous world title winners.
In a battle of the Baltic states, Estonia’s Tanak climbed from sixth to fourth overall in his Hyundai i20 N Rally1, winning the morning’s penultimate stage and closing to within 6.3s of Sesks. However, a transmission fault in the leg-ending Liepaja City Stage put him briefly off the road and cost him around 15s, putting him 20.8s in arrears of Sesk at the overnight halt.
Tanak was successful in collecting more Saturday classification points than his main WRC title rivals, Toyota’s Elfyn Evans and Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville, who were sixth and eighth respectively, but he must finish the rally on Sunday in order to bank them.
Fifth went the way of M-Sport Ford team leader Adrien Fourmaux, who ended 8.4s down on Tanak, but with 17.9s in hand over sixth-placed Evans.
Takamoto Katsuta fell to eighth overall, having run as high as fourth before an impact broke his GR Yaris car’s power steering late in the morning loop.
Neuville, who led the WRC points heading into Latvia, was running second on the road and still struggling with low traction as he was forced to sweep the loose gravel for the cars behind. Unable to push, he placed eighth overall in his i20 N Rally1.
Hyundai’s Esapekka Lappi and M-Sport Ford’s Gregoire Munster completed the overall top 10 in an event that, so far, has seen no retirements from the headlining Rally1 class.
In WRC2, the second tier of international rallying, Oliver Solberg is on course to claim his second class victory of the 2024 season after carefully consolidating his lead through Saturday.
After a dominant Friday, during which the Swede won six out of seven stages to build up a 31.1s advantage, Solberg’s focus switched to lead preservation on Saturday’s equally fast gravel tests.
Being the first Rally2 competitor onto the stages presented a challenge in itself, with Solberg forced to sweep a fresh line after the wider, more powerful Rally1 cars had been through. Despite that, he and co-driver Elliott Edmondson were inside the top three on each stage and collected two fastest times along the way, finishing the day in 11th on the overall leaderboard.
Solberg’s Skoda Fabia RS Rally2 headed Mikko Heikkila’s Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 rival by 26.6sec overnight, with Sami Pajari’s GR Yaris 5.0s further back.
Sunday’s final leg includes two stages, each used twice, totaling 39.82 competitive miles of more super-fast and flowing gravel. The 8.29-mile Mazilmaja 2 test is the rally-closing, bonus points-paying Wolf Power Stage.
WRC Rally Latvia, positions after Leg Two, SS16
1 Kalle Rovanpera/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota GR Yaris Rally1) 1h56m53.1ss
2 Sebastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR Yaris Rally1) +41.0s
3 Martins Sesks/Renars Francis (Ford Puma Rally1) +45.7s
4 Ott Tanak/Martin Jarveoja (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +52.0s
5 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Ford Puma Rally1) +1m14.7s
6 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR Yaris Rally1) +1m34.1s
7 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR Yaris Rally1) +1m45.9s
8 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +2m33.7s
9 Esapekka Lappi/Janne Ferm (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +3m09.5s
10 Gregoire Munster/Louis Louka (Ford Puma Rally1) +3m37.6s
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