After 73 race starts, Estonian driver Ott Tanak made history by winning his maiden World Rally Championship(WRC) title at Rally Italia Sardegna on Sunday afternoon. The 29-year old M-Sport team's driver finished ahead of Jari-Matti Latvala's Toyota Yaris by 12.3sec after 312km of action in a Ford Fiesta on scorching island roads.
Also read: WRC 2017: Complete schedule, , drivers, teams, cars, new regulations explained
Hyundai Motorsport's Thierry Neuville was 55.4 sec behind in a Hyundai i20 to finish the rally as the second runner-up. Esapekka Lappi finished fourth in only his second World Rally. He won six of the 19 tests in his Yaris to finish 1min 12.4sec ahead of championship leader Sebastien Ogier.
Ogier struggled for grip throughout the weekend but claimed the fifth spot when a power steering problem delayed Juho Hanninen on Sunday. Hanninen eventually finished at his career-best sixth place. Mads Ostberg limped through the final stage with broken suspension in his Fiesta but held on to the seventh spot ahead of Andreas Mikkelsen on his debut in a Citroen C3.
Tanak inherited the lead in Rally Italy after Hyundai's Hayden Paddon crashed on Saturday afternoon. "Everyone has been asking me is how it feels, and I can confirm, it feels good! It was a really difficult weekend but we had a clever strategy and we stuck to it – and now it's happy days," said Tanak. "This was an important step for us, and now that it's job done, let's see where we can go from here."
It was Estonia's first WRC win since Markko Martin's success in Spain in 2004. Tanak is now third in the standings as the season reached midpoint. Neuville' third place finish helped him in closing the gap on championship leader Ogier to 18 points.
Interestingly, Tanak has become the fifth driver to win in seven rounds of the current unpredictable season. The second half of the season begins on the fast gravel roads of Orlen 74th Rally Poland, which is based in Mikolajki from June 29 to July 2.
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