WRC – Rovanperä/Halttunen claim dominant Rally Latvia win

2024 Tet Rally Latvia – Final report

Kalle Rovanperä sealed a dominant start-to-finish victory at Tet Rally Latvia on Sunday afternoon, wrapping up his second triumph in as many high-speed gravel events.

Having started his first-ever rally on Latvia’s roads more than 10 years ago aged 12, the Finnish driver rolled back the clocks to win the Baltic nation’s first FIA World Rally Championship round.

Rovanperä was never seriously challenged during the four-day fixture, which started in the capital city Rīga on Thursday evening before journeying west to Liepāja. He built a comfortable lead during the first two legs in his Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 and eased through the finale to win the season’s eighth round by 39.2sec.

Sébastien Ogier completed a 1-2 for the Japanese marque while Ott Tänak stole the final podium spot from Mārtiņš Sesks after the local hero was plagued by transmission fault in the Wolf Power Stage.

Sesks was cruelly deprived of what could have been a maiden podium on only his second outing at rallying’s top level. The 24-year-old won two stages on Friday and entered the final test with 4.6sec in hand over Tänak despite two overshoots earlier in the morning, but his M-Sport Ford Puma Rally1 developed a transmission problem just one corner into the stage.

The drivers’ championship battle closed up as Tänak extracted maximum points from Super Sunday and climbed to second in the drivers’ championship standings.

He now trails Hyundai i20 N Rally1 team-mate Thierry Neuville by just eight points with five rounds remaining with Elfyn Evans, who slipped to third in the standings, just five points further back. Neuville and Evans finished eighth and fifth respectively and both struggled to recover from the time loss they faced by opening the road in loose conditions on Friday.

M-Sport Ford man Adrien Fourmaux ended 27.0sec behind Tänak in fourth despite encountering a small engine problem on the last two stages, with Toyota star Evans finishing a further 11.2sec in arrears.

Takamoto Katsuta brought his GR Yaris home sixth ahead of Sesks and Neuville. Grégoire Munster was ninth, gaining a position when the engine on Esapekka Lappi’s Hyundai cried enough after the final stage. 

Solberg leads WRC2 after Latvian triumph

Completing the leaderboard, Oliver Solberg stormed into the lead of the WRC2 championship after securing the class victory on Sunday.

The 22-year-old Swede led from start to finish on the high-speed gravel fixture, taking out maximum points in his Škoda Fabia RS Rally2 to overtake Sami Pajari and Yohan Rossel, who was not competing, in the race for the championship title.

After winning seven out of eight stages to open a commanding lead of more than half a minute on Friday, Solberg managed his speed accordingly over the closing two legs to ensure he kept Mikko Heikkilä – who took home the WRC2 Challenger honours in his Toyota GR Yaris – at bay.

He now leads the series by three points from Pajari after ending the four-day fixture with a 37.4sec winning margin.

Pajari was frustrated to finish 7.4sec behind Heikkilä in his similar Toyota, with the Finnish hotshot feeling as if his performance inside the car wasn’t reflected on the stage times. Pajari will step up to the big-league next month when he debuts a Rally1-specification GR Yaris on his home round from 1 – 4 August.

Fau Zaldivar equalled his best result of the season so far, ending more than two minutes back from the podium with fourth in his Škoda. The Paraguayan was comfortably clear of fifth-placed Ford Fiesta man William Creighton at the finish, while Italy’s Roberto Daprà completed the top six.

Armin Kremer bagged his fourth WRC Masters Cup victory in a row and now leads the series by 37 points. Meanwhile, Estonian driver Joosep Nõgene was never headed in his pursuit for WRC3 glory after his main rival Kerem Kazaz suffered broken suspension on the rally’s opening stage.

WRC remains in northern Europe for another fast gravel road fixture at Secto Rally Finland next month. Round nine of the season is based in Jyväskylä from 1 – 4 August.