Kalle Rovanpera maintained his control of Rally Latvia as the Toyota driver closed in on a dominant World Rally Championship victory on Sunday morning.
The two-time world champion was unable to relax with Super Sunday points on offer and managed to balance the need for points and to preserve his overall rally lead perfectly.
Rovanpera headed into the final two stages with a 40.3s margin over Toyota’s Sebastien Ogier.
Rally1 rookie Martins Sesks held third [+54.0s] ahead of Hyundai’s Ott Tanak [+1m06.7s] and M-Sport’s full-time driver Adrien Fourmaux [+1m26.6s] .
Toyota’s Elfyn Evans continued to hold sixth [+1m40.7s] from Takamoto Katsuta [+2m02.9s] and championship leader Thierry Neuville [+2m44.0s]. The top 10 was completed by Esapekka Lappi [+3m31.8s] and M-Sport’s Gregoire Munster [+4m37.5s].
Sunday morning began in overcast conditions but once again road order was crucial for posting stage-winning times.
Ogier kicked off the quartet of stages by topping the times in stage 17 [Krogzemji, 18.70km] by 1.4s from rally leader Rovanpera. The time meant Ogier took an early lead in the Super Sunday standings with the extra points on Rovanpera’s mind too despite his now 41.1s rally lead.
“We try to be fast and try to get some points for the team. Toyota has so far the two fastest cars, so all okay,” said Rovanpera.
“We are here to help the team so we need to bring some points on Sunday, personally it’s not so fun when you’re in a good lead and you want to fight for the win, but we can do both.”
The overall leaderboard remained largely unchanged as Sesks continued to hold third from a charging Tanak, desperate to salvage Sunday points. After his eventful Saturday, Tanak started the final day with a third-fastest stage time.
Sesks continued to impress to post the fourth-quickest time while title contenders Evans and Neuville clocked identical efforts ahead of M-Sport’s Adrien Fourmaux, who provisionally claimed the final Super Sunday point.
Tanak boosted his Super Sunday hopes by winning stage 18 [Mazilmaja, 13.34km] to sit second in the Sunday classification, 0.9s behind Ogier, who held the provisional seven bonus points.
Tanak took the stage win by 1.2s, with rally leader Rovanpera a further eight tenths back as he held third in the Sunday points.
The remaining Super Sunday positions were occupied by Evans, Sesks, Neuville and Fourmaux.
Oliver Solberg led the WRC2 class by 33.1s from Mikko Heikkila and Sami Pajari.
The crews will repeat the pair of stages which will conclude the rally this afternoon.
