Estonia was one of two brand-new additions to the World Rally Championship for this season due to Covid chaos, the other being Belgium at the end of the year.
And while it was no surprise that Ott Tänak triumphed on home territory in Tartu, not that many were expecting to see Craig Breen follow him in second – impressively only 22sec behind after 17 stages.
Tänak grew up on Estonian roads so seemed destined to become the fourth WRC winner of the four rounds held so far. But although Irishman Breen has driven Rally Estonia before (as a warm-up for Rally Finland), keeping pace with the reigning world champion wasn’t something that he would have put on his agenda at the start of his part-time season.
There’s something about the Hyundai i20 WRC that clearly suits Breen in a way that the Citroëns he drove previously didn’t. “This is some car!” he enthused afterwards. “What you can do with this car on these stages, you couldn’t imagine in your wildest dreams.”
By contrast, Tänak’s regular team-mate, Thierry Neuville, wiped out his rear suspension, and Breen’s strong performance means Sébastien Loeb – with whom he and Dani Sordo share the third Hyundai – now has plenty to aim for as he returns for Rally Turkey this weekend.
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article reads like a hyundai pr freindly advert. stop shilling!
another day another hyundai/kia advert disguised as an article on autocar. Autocar how much do the koreans pay you to spam the front page with pro hyundai/kia adverts? Hyundais mediocre performance in estonia is hardly news, wrc is a dead sport now with only 3 manufactures competing and non existant homologation rules where the pos hyundai wrc car has NOTHING in common with the road car. Like I said the wrc is a dead sport and is only used as a billboard for hyundai to improve the ‘image’ and brand perception of their crap cars
Eh?
Eh?