Red-hot Rovanperä powers to stunning Latvia WRC win

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.

“It has been a great weekend,” said Rovanperä, whose victory followed a similarly dominant performance at the previous round in Poland. “It is cool to have the first win here, Latvia is an important place for me.

“Big thanks to Jonne [Halttunen, co-driver] and the whole team, we have been stronger than we expected. We are going to enjoy this one and then work hard [for the next round] in Finland.”

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.

“It was in the first corner,” explained Sesks, who lost almost two minutes and plummeted to seventh. “We don’t know if it’s a diff problem or something like that, after that we understood that it was over. Still, I think we showed our pace and made everyone happy.”

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, while WRC2 winner Oliver Solberg completed the leaderboard.

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.