Local hero Ott Tänak dominates Estonian WRC event

The FIA World Rally Championship is in the middle of a seven-week northern hemisphere summer break but the action continued in front of huge crowds in Estonia at the weekend.

Billed as the inaugural WRC Promotional event, Shell Helix Rally Estonia delivered a mid-summer special attraction on undulating and extremely fast gravel roads.

Based in Estonia’s second largest city of Tartu, the event offers valuable preparation for the high-speed challenges of WRC Rally Finland early next month and all four WRC

Manufacturer teams were represented at the two-day event run over a 15-stage event and 151km sprint format.

The rally-mad Estonian fans primarily turned out to watch Ott Tanak at the wheel of a Toyota Gazoo Racing Yaris WRC while Hyundai Motorsport brought WRC cars for Andreas Mikkelsen (Norway) and new recruit Craig Breen (Ireland).

Welshman Elfyn Evans drove an M-Sport Ford Fiesta and Esapekka Lappi (Finland) flew the flag for Citroen while the other WRC regular was Finland’s Teemu Suninen who piloted the new generation Ford Fiesta R5 car.

The fans were thrilled by Tanak’s performance as he powered to a third victory in his home rally. Tanak won seven of the nine Saturday stages to build a lead of 33.4secs over Mikkelsen and then dominated the Sunday contest with an unbeaten run through six more stages to extend his lead over Mikkelsen to a winning margin of 1m 03.5secs.

Lappi was 1m 27.1secs behind  Tanak to take third place while Evans lost time early after damaging his Fiesta on a jump but he moved past Breen’s Hyundai to finish fourth.

The Estonian fans not only had new hero Tanak to support. Former WRC star Markko Martin claimed sixth driving a Ford Fiesta WRC.

The rally also had a strong line-up of R5 cars with Norwegian 17-year-old Oliver Solberg, the son of Petter, setting the pace in a Volkswagen Polo GTI R5 to finish in seventh overall ahead of the Skoda Fabias of Estonia’s Rainer Aus and highly-rated young Finn Eerik Pietarinen.

WRC Rally Finland begins the second half of the 2019 WRC calendar running from August 1-4.

Also taking an extended mid-year break is the New Zealand Rally Championship.

With four rounds now completed, details of the next round have just been confirmed.

The Dayle ITM Goldrush Rally of Coromandel on Saturday August 17 will be the penultimate round of the 2019 series with runaway series leader Ben Hunt (Subaru) only needing a handful of points to clinch the title after a string of four maximum scores.

The Coromandel event follows a familiar format to recent years with eight special stages totalling 127km of competition.

From a 7am start at Whitianga the opening competition takes place on the northern part of the peninsula with two passes through the 22.4km Port Charles stage, split by a remote refuel in Coromandel town.

The rally then makes a run easterly across the peninsula on the 309 Rd before the first of two visits to the service park at Mercury Bay Multisports complex at 11.34am.

The rally then races across the peninsula twice more through the Tapu-Coroglen and 309 Rd stages and with a second visit to service at 2.25pm. There is a new finish to the rally with a 1.50km Dakota Drive tarmac spectator stage in Whitianga before a 5pm finish.

The final round of the national rally championship will be the Hamilton Car Club’s Waitomo Rally on Saturday October 19.