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Toyota’s Ott Tanak beat Hayden Paddon of Hyundai and Craig Breen’s Citroen to win Rally Estonia, a World Rally Championship warm-up event for Rally Finland.
The event features fast and flowing stages – akin to Finland – albeit rougher in nature, and Tanak and co-driver Martin Jarveoja’s knowledge of their home rally paid dividends.
It’s the first time as many as three manufacturers from the WRC have joined a non championship event since the faster cars with bigger aero were introduced for the 2017 season.
The Yaris of Tanak was dominant, dropping only three stages to Breen and one to Paddon, taking his stage-win tally to 12 as he beat Paddon and co-driver Seb Marshall by 59.3s.
Breen had held second but had a sixth-gear off into a field aboard his C3 WRC, before a problem in service meant he was late to a stage and incurred over two minutes in penalties.
Without it, he could have fought Tanak for victory, but finished 3m12.6s adrift, after the 2m10s of penalties.
The only WRC top manufacturer missing was M-Sport Ford, which chose to continue testing instead of competing on an event.
The rest of the top 10 was populated by R5s and older-spec WRC cars, with Hyundai young driver and WRC2 contender Jari Huttunen taking fifth in his i20 R5.
Valeriy Gorban, a regular in the WRC in his Mini John Cooper Works WRC, took seventh ahead of European Rally Championship Skoda Fabia driver Raul Jeets.
Oliver Solberg, teenage son of 2003 World Rally champion Petter, took 17th in his front-wheel-drive Peugeot 208 R2.