Tanak cruises to Rally Finland success
Ott Tanak has taken a dominant Rally Finland victory as he ends the weekend 32.7 seconds ahead of second-placed Mads Ostberg, his second World Rally Championship win of 2018.
Tanak started the event off with a win on the Thursday evening street stage and continued to lead on Friday morning until Ostberg pulled ahead after a strong run through Assamaki.
A win on the following stage put Tanak back on top, and the pair continued to trade stage wins and overall positions for the remainder of the afternoon.
On Saturday Tanak became unbeatable, taking a clean sweep of the morning stages and by the start of Sunday the Toyota driver had a lead of 40 seconds over Ostberg, despite minor power steering issues.
The Estonian could afford to take Sunday a bit easier although he still went fastest in the powerstage and took the maximum 30 points away from the weekend.
Ostberg’s weekend was compromised by his C3’s high tyre wear across the event but it was not enough to allow Jari-Matti Latvala make it a Toyota one-two.
The Finn had a slow start to his home rally but he had the pace to get him into a distant third before he capitalised on Ostberg’s tyre issues, with Latvala eventually finishing a mere 2.8s behind the Norwegian.
The third Toyota of Esapekka Lappi looked set for fourth before the Finn crashed out in Sunday’s opening stage.
Lappi had come back from a stall on SS2 that had left him 49s off the lead and had charged up the field taking victory in three out of the four Saturday afternoon stages.
Haydon Paddon ended up inheriting the place and was the highest placed Hyundai driver after a strong weekend, with reigning world champion Sebastien Ogier in fifth.
While Tanak appeared unhindered by running close to the front, championship leaders Ogier and Thierry Neuville both suffered from their road-sweeping duties.
Ogier was unhappy with the set-up of his new areo package and it was an M-Sport team effort to protect his championship bid, with Elfyn Evans slowing on Friday to allow Ogier a more favourable running position for the rest of the weekend and Teemu Suninen deliberately taking a penalty on Sunday to help out the Frenchman.
Evans and Suninen were rewarded with sixth and seventh place, ahead of Craig Breen, whose weekend was ruined by a puncture on Friday’s opening stage.
He also suffered a fuel feed issue and despite a stage win he could not display the pace of Citroen team-mate Ostberg.
Ninth went to Neuville who had a weekend of woe, starting with a spin that cost him half a minute on Friday morning.
However Neuville’s championship lead is only cut to 21 points as the Belgian was able to go fourth in the powerstage and gain two extra championship points.
Andreas Mikkelsen managed to climb back into the top 10 after a disastrous weekend, losing three minutes after a trip off the road and a chicane clipping incident on Friday.
17-year-old Finn Kalle Rovenpera dominated WRC2 until he damaged his suspension from a collision with a rock on Saturday’s final stage and was forced to retire, leaving Eerik Pietarinen to take the win.