Rally Estonia is a new event on Europe’s rally map. Well at least in name, as these roads in southern Estonia have been used for many years in national rallies. And, it seems like Rally Estonia has found its international niche as a good preparation round for WRC Neste Oil Rally Finland.
The international auto24 Rally Estonia entry list drew 77 cars, 70 cars in the national field and seven historics, bringing to the total number of cars driving through the stages to more than 150.
At least for this reason – the preparation for the next WRC round – lured all the big names to the Rally Estonia entry list: Mads Ostberg, Kris Meeke, Dennis Kuipers and FIA’s WRC Academy drivers. Rally fans might grin and say that these drivers would make excuses ahead of the start in case the local drivers were to be faster than them, but let’s be reasonable about this: Rally Finland is the main goal for them and no-one will sacrifice their car and or themselves to fight for the win in this event just before what is most probably the most important rally of the season.
In fact, Rally Estonia’s organisers undertook massive amounts of work to make the entry list as star-studded as it was. It was a shame that the MINI WRC Team withdrew from the event at the very last minute as they had a crash while testing in Sardinia the week before Rally Estonia. But, all other promised drivers were on start podium. Of course for local fans it was very nice to see the latest WRC cars, but main intrigue was: will Markko Martin win again? This time he had much stronger and faster rivals than last year…
It was clear from very beginning that his biggest rival would be the young Norwegian Mads Ostberg, the runner-up in WRC Rally Sweden in his Ford Fiesta RS WRC. Considering that Markko drove with his favourite yet six generations older Ford Focus RS WRC, this fight couldn’t be regarded as equal… But on other hand, it’s Markko Martin; he knows these roads by heart and can set the fastest stage times even without any pace notes!
On the first day of the rally the drivers tackled three stages, one on gravel and two short city super special stages on tarmac. The Day Two start order was to be drawn up using the Day One results, and this saw tactics come into play… Being the fastest over the first two stages, Markko Martin/Kristo Kraag clearly didn’t want to be first on the road on the second day and entertained spectators by doing a Panizzi-style doughnut before they finished SS3. The time they lost there was enough to drop them to third place overall, behind rally leader Georg Gross (Ford Focus RS WRC) and Ostberg.
However, Mother Nature visited overnight and left heavy overnight rain that killed the dust and made road positions more equal. Ostberg won all six stages on Day Two and was crowned the winner of the auto24 Rally Estonia 2011. But this win didn’t come easy for the Norwegian, as Martin was pushing really hard and this was evidenced in the fact that the biggest gap between them throughout the rally’s stages was just 5,6sec! At the end of the rally, Ostberg’s dominance was 24sec over Martin.
There were two extra contests in this Rally Estonia: for the biggest (in SS2/3 – the city stage) and the most impressive (in SS4/7 -Alakula) jumps. The first was won by Georg Gross with 33.5 meters. The special prize for the longest jump turned out to be Gross’ only prize in this rally as he rolled in very last stage while being in a safe third place overall. This position was claimed by Junior World Rally Champion Martin Prokop (Ford Fiesta S2000) who added it to his N4 Class winner’s trophy.
The Historic Class was won by Jari Latvala/Asko Sairanen (Ford Escort RS1800) and the National Class by Hendrik Kers/Viljo Vider (Mitsubishi Lancer Evo V).
OVERALL CLASSIFICATION
01) M. Østberg/J. Andersson
Ford Fiesta WRC 2011 – 01h 15m 19.9s
02) M. Märtin/ K. Kraag
Ford Focus WRC 2003 + 24.0s
03) M. Prokop/M. Ernst
Ford Fiesta S2000 + 03m 37.4s
04) K. Kruuda/M. Järveoja
Ford Fiesta S2000 + 04m 05.5s
05) S. Pärn/K. Järveoja
Subaru Impreza WRX STI + 04m 19.5s
06) K. Koitla/A. Ots
Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX + 04m 22.6s
07) R. Jeets/E. Lepikson
Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX + 04m 22.8s
08) D. Kuipers/F. Miclotte
Ford Fiesta S2000 + 04m 53.1s
09) J. Vorobjovs/G. Zicāns
Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X + 04m 53.4s
10) D. Butvilas/R. Vaitkevičius
Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X + 05m 19.3s
