One of the fastest rounds of the FIA World Rally Championship, Rally Estonia is running to a compact schedule this year that packs just over 300 competitive kilometres into little more than 48 hours. The action began with the pre-event shakedown on Friday morning, where Pajari and team-mate Elfyn Evans shared the fastest time.
When the rally began for real in the afternoon, Pajari made a perfect start, setting the fastest time in all three stages on the initial loop to open up a small advantage of 4.1 seconds over team-mate Oliver Solberg.
After a tyre fitting zone between the two loops of stages, Pajari was even more dominant through the second pass of the three forest stages, extending his margin above 14s. He was also fastest in the day’s closing street stage in Elva to finish up 14.7s clear of second-placed Solberg.
Returning to Estonia one year after his debut victory aboard the GR YARIS Rally1, Solberg was consistently in the top-three stage times throughout the day and ended it 1.8s ahead of third-placed Adrien Fourmaux (Hyundai).
On his first day competing in Estonia in five years, Sébastien Ogier produced a solid and consistent performance to sit fifth overall, 9.3s behind fourth-placed Thierry Neuville of Hyundai.
Takamoto Katsuta was running sixth overall until he sustained tyre damage in the day’s final forest stage and was forced to retire due to a lack of usable spare rubber. The team will prepare his car to restart tomorrow.
Championship leader Elfyn Evans faced challenging conditions running first on the very dry and loose gravel roads and ended the day ninth overall.
In WRC2, GR Yaris Rally2 drivers Teemu Suninen and Roope Korhonen are second and third overall within five seconds of the lead, while TGR WRC Challenge Program driver Jaspar Vaher is fourth on home soil on his category debut, having scored his first stage win in SS3. Yuki Yamamoto is 14th after a spin in SS1, while two more debutants Takumi Matsushita and Shotaro Goto are 16th and 17th respectively.
Quotes:
Juha Kankkunen (Deputy Team Principal)
“Sami has driven very well today. To be able to set the fastest time on every stage is quite surprising and impressive. Already in shakedown he was very happy with the feeling in the car and didn’t need to change anything. He’s been smiling and relaxed and enjoying himself, and hopefully for him it can continue like this. Oliver and Seb both had solid days and I’m sure they can get stronger tomorrow, and Elfyn too with a slightly better road position. Taka was unfortunate today but he just needs to put that behind him and look forward.”
Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“It’s been a tough start to the rally for us opening the road today with some very loose conditions. We tried to do all that we can, and it didn’t feel so bad behind the wheel. We just weren’t able to put competitive times on the board, and it could be a bit disheartening to see the guys coming faster behind. Thankfully this afternoon with the ruts forming the time loss wasn’t so bad, and tomorrow should at least be a bit better with a couple of cars in front of us.”
Sébastien Ogier (Driver car 1)
“I think it’s been a decent day for us. People know that I will never say I’m happy being in fifth place, but I knew coming here it would be challenging and I think we did a decent job from third on the road after five years not competing here. Sami has been flying today, so well done to him: winning all of the stages is something special. On our side there’s still some work to do to try and improve a bit, work on the car and myself to hopefully be closer to that pace tomorrow and catch some more positions.”
Oliver Solberg (Driver car 99)
“Second place is a pretty good position but I can’t be completely satisfied with the day. This morning it was all pretty close, but the afternoon was a bit more difficult in terms of the times compared to Sami, who has done a great job today. I was struggling a bit with the feeling and to find that sweet spot to be able to push. But we’re not far away and we will keep trying to improve some small things. Tomorrow will be a long day and it will be important to manage the tyres when we’re driving the first and second pass on the same set.”
Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“Today didn’t go as expected. It was quite a difficult start already in the morning. We went a bit too much on the soft side with the car setup and it wasn’t working so well in the super high speed sections. We managed it as well as we could and without losing too much time. Unfortunately, we got damage to two tyres during the second loop and couldn’t continue. It’s very disappointing, but I will just keep trying to do my best over the rest of the rally.”
Sami Pajari (Driver car 5)
“I can be very happy at the end of the day. To take a clean sweep of stage wins and be in the lead is really good, and more importantly the feeling behind the wheel has been really great. The driving has just been flowing quite naturally. Of course, we are pushing but I don’t feel like I’m taking big risk and it feels under control. The morning was super tight with our rivals but in the afternoon we managed to make a bit more of a gap. Still, it’s only Friday. There’s two long days still to go, so no chance to relax yet, but I’m looking forward to tomorrow and will just try to keep enjoying it.”
End of day one (Friday):
1 Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) 49m43.5s
2 Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +14.7s
3 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +16.5s
4 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +24.0s
5 Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +33.3s
6 Mārtiņš Sesks/Renārs Francis (Ford Puma Rally1) +44.7s
7 Esapekka Lappi/Enni Mälkönen (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +46.5s
8 Josh McErlean/Eoin Treacy (Ford Puma Rally1) +46.6s
9 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +49.8s
10 Jon Armstrong/Shane Byrne (Ford Puma Rally1) +1m04.3s
41 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +11m32.5s
(Results as of 23:00 on Friday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)
What’s next?
Saturday is the longest day of the rally, with a total of nine stages and 149.6 competitive kilometres. Two stages to the north of Tartu are run twice prior to mid-day service, with another two stages to the south run twice in the afternoon before a super special stage adjacent to the service park ends the day.
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