WRC – Rovanperä/Halttunen Claim Dominant Rally Latvia Win [Photo Gallery]

Kalle Rovanperä sealed a dominant start-to-finish victory at Tet Rally Latvia on Sunday afternoon, wrapping up his second triumph in as many high-speed gravel events.

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.

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.

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.

Text via FIA press release.