Sami Pajari is within two stages of a maiden FIA World Rally Championship victory after completing Saturday’s action at Delfi Rally Estonia with a commanding 25.0-second lead.
The Toyota Gazoo Racing driver began the longest leg of the rally with a 14.7-second advantage over team-mate Oliver Solberg, having set the fastest time on all seven of Friday’s stages.
Pajari extended that margin to 17.6 seconds by winning Saturday morning’s opening two tests, before Solberg responded with back-to-back stage victories on SS10 and SS11 to reduce the deficit to 14.1 seconds at the midday service in Tartu.
However, Pajari and co-driver Marko Salminen regained control during the afternoon loop, setting three consecutive fastest times to move further clear at the head of the field.
Two passes of the 24.39-kilometre Kääriku stage now separate Pajari from his first WRC victory, 12 months after Solberg claimed his breakthrough win in the championship’s top category at the same event.
Pajari nevertheless refused to take the result for granted after narrowly avoiding a spin when he struck a rock near the finish of SS14. Combined with the increasingly deteriorated road surface on SS15, the incident prompted a more measured approach through the day’s final full-length stage.
“It’s not easy, it’s never meant to be easy, but still we are somehow quite comfortable with the lead,” said Pajari. “But it’s anyway quite many kilometres to do as well tomorrow, so it’s not too straightforward, but there was on the road section one fan with a really cool poster, which said, ‘Sami, don't listen to Marko, send it’. So, I’m trying to follow that.”
Pajari’s cautious run on SS15 also brought Toyota’s sequence of stage victories to an end, with Hyundai Shell Mobis World Rally Team driver Thierry Neuville becoming the first non-Toyota competitor to set a fastest time during the rally.
Solberg delivered a stronger performance on Saturday after struggling to match Pajari’s pace during the opening leg. Although the Swede briefly reduced the gap during the morning, he conceded that second place was now the more realistic target.
“I was a bit optimistic with my tyre choice this afternoon,” Solberg said. “It was a bit difficult with the tyres. The feeling with the car is good, but Sami has the very good feeling. Just need to feel a little bit more comfortable. It’s very hard for the tyres and hard to know how to rotate them. Sami is doing a great job and that’s it.”
Adrien Fourmaux completed the day in third place for Hyundai despite striking an anti-cut device with the front-right corner of his i20 N Rally1 on SS10. The impact removed part of the car’s bodywork, although the Frenchman avoided more serious damage.
A slow tyre deflation on SS11 and a wild moment on SS13 allowed team-mate Neuville to close rapidly during the afternoon. Neuville outpaced Fourmaux on three stages and ended the day just 1.9 seconds behind, after the Hyundai pair recorded identical times on SS16.
Sébastien Ogier holds fifth place for Toyota, 30.1 seconds ahead of team-mate and championship leader Elfyn Evans.
Evans began the day in ninth but moved up two positions on SS8, passing Esapekka Lappi and benefiting when Josh McErlean stopped with a technical problem after 13.4 kilometres.
The Welshman then climbed to sixth when Mārtiņš Sesks sustained front-right tyre damage on SS9. With Sesks forced to manage his tyres through SS10 and SS11, Evans was able to establish a 13.4-second advantage over the Latvian.
Sesks remains seventh and continues to carry a 20-second penalty after leaving Friday morning’s pre-start service two minutes late while his M-Sport Ford mechanics completed repairs following an incident during Shakedown.
Lappi occupies eighth after recovering from a high-speed slide on SS12, with Jon Armstrong ninth and Estonia’s WRC2 leader Robert Virves completing the overall top 10 in his Škoda Fabia RS Rally2.
McErlean endured a difficult Saturday after his strong opening leg. The M-Sport Ford driver lost approximately 10 minutes when he stopped on SS8 and later retired before SS10 with a reported exhaust manifold issue.
Takamoto Katsuta returned to competition on Saturday after tyre damage forced him to retire before Friday evening’s final stage. Running near the front of the road order, the Japanese driver spent much of the day sweeping loose gravel from the stages for those behind.
Delfi Rally Estonia concludes on Sunday with two passes of the 24.39-kilometre Kääriku test, the longest stage of the event.
The opening run is scheduled to begin at 11:05 local time, before the repeat hosts the rally-ending Wolf Power Stage from 13:15.
