Esapekka Lappi was the big winner of the Rally Sweden, the second round of the World Rally Championship (WRC) which ended this Sunday in Umeå. The Hyundai driver had not won since mid-2017, almost seven years ago, and imposed his law on the snow and ice of the only winter event of the season.
Kalle Rovanperä (Toyota), who made his first occasional participation of the year, took the lead by winning the opening night super-special on Thursday – reinforcing his position in SS2 the following day. Change of leader in SS4, with Takamoto Katsuta (Toyota) being the fastest to rise to the top. Rovanperä suffered an incident that caused damage to his car – just like Ott Tänak (Hyundai).
Katsuta remained in the lead until being overtaken by Lappi in the seventh stage. Before that, highlight to SS5 (Brattby 2), in which the Rally2 cars prevailed and Georg Linnamäe (Toyota) set the pace. Lappi was the best Rally1 in sixth place. Friday ended with SS8 and the Finn had a 3.2s margin over Katsuta. Surprisingly, there was a Rally2 car in third place overall – Oliver Solberg (Skoda).
On Saturday, Lappi’s life became easier in the tenth stage, where an incident took Katsuta out of the fight. The leader’s main pursuer became Adrien Fourmaux (M-Sport Ford) more than a minute and a half behind. From then on, Lappi didn’t have to take risks. Saturday afternoon was dominated by Thierry Neuville (Hyundai), with three wins between SS13 and SS15, but the Belgian was already far behind in fourth place overall – behind Lappi, Fourmaux, and Elfyn Evans (Toyota).
Sunday started with Rovanperä setting the pace in SS16, in which Evans overtook Fourmaux to move up to second in the rally and already less than a minute behind Lappi. The gap was substantially shortened to just over half a minute in the next stage, won by Evans.
Only the Power Stage in Umeå was left. Rovanperä set the pace 0.1s ahead of Evans to score five points, with Neuville in third, Tänak fourth, and Katsuta fifth also in the points-paying positions. Seventh place was enough for Lappi to secure the victory in the rally, beating Evans by 29.6s. Fourmaux achieved his first podium in third and Neuville finished fourth.
The top five overall was closed by Solberg. Competing at home, the Swede dominated overwhelmingly in WRC2, losing only seven of the 18 stages in the class. He was the winner 1m19.7s ahead of Sami Pajari (Toyota), on a podium completed by Linnamäe. The fight in the WRC2 Challenger was much closer, with Pajari winning by only 2.5s margin over Linnamäe after a very balanced rally. Roope Korhonen (Toyota) also competed and finished third.
Swede Mille Johansson triumphed in Junior WRC and WRC3, classes in which he surpassed Romet Jürgenson by a clear 48.9s. The home driver took the lead in the categories at SS6 and quickly started to distance himself to stay out of reach. Kelly Eamonn closed the podium of these categories over four minutes behind the top.
Top ten of the final overall:
