Rally Estonia - 1st Day - 2nd Loop: Pajari distances his rivals with 4 stage wins, Katsuta retires

At the end of Friday evening, Sami Pajari remains the rally leader in Estonia with Oliver Solberg and Adrien Fourmaux following him.

Sami Pajari managed to increase his rally lead to 14,7 seconds as he was the fastest driver in all stages on Friday evening despite the fact that he got the wrong line in Stage 5.

Oliver Solberg is still second overall, but his place is under threat by Adrien Fourmaux who is behind the Swede driver for 1,8 seconds. In fact, their gap was at four tenths of a second after Stage 4 in favor of Solberg.

Thierry Neuville keeps the fourth position overall and still struggled with understeer, but now is ahead of the sixth Sebastien Ogier for 9,3 seconds as the last one dropped time compared to Neuville.

Martins Sesks sits in sixth position overall and is the best driver for M-Sport Ford, but Esapekka Lappi will try to chase him down as EP is just 1,8 seconds behind the Latvian driver.

Only one tenth of a second separated the eighth Josh McErlean from EP while it must be mentioned that the Irishman was fighting with Katsuta for the sixth place after the end of SS4.

Elfyn Evans is ninth overall and as fighting with EP for the eighth place as Lappi was 0,1 seconds ahead of Evans after SS4 while the last one overtook the Hyundai driver for 0,5 seconds after SS5. Last bit not least, Evans lost two places in Stage 6 as he dropped from seventh to ninth.

Jon Armstorng completes the top ten and is at the bottom of the Rally1 classification.

Toyota Gazoo Racing confirmed that Takamoto Katsuta is forced to retire after the end of Stage 6 following his front left puncture there. In fact, the Japanese star lost 56,7 seconds and dropped from sixth to eleventh after SS6.

Watch below the stage times:

Watch below the overall classification after SS7:

Photo Credits: Toyota