No excuses for Mikkelsen - he needs to win in Estonia for his Ch'ship hopes and has just done the high speed Rally Liepeja.
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No excuses for Mikkelsen - he needs to win in Estonia for his Ch'ship hopes and has just done the high speed Rally Liepeja.
1. Østberg
2. Gryazin
3. Mikkelsen
1.Gryazin
2.Ostberg
3.Mikkelsen
4.Lukyanuk
5.Kaur
Gryazin will not finish this rally without a major incident.
That would be shame because he knows this rally well + he won ERC Liepaja (similar roads) where he actually showed outstanding speed and later drove in safe mode to protect the win (sounds unreal, but thats what happened). And already in Liepaja he was talking about Estonia and some clever tyre strategy. Win in this rally would be huge boost for his future career plans. I actaully want him to suceed here and I'm sure he is capable to do it.
EDIT: And he will have almost ideal road position, not the first and not the too far back).
Østberg is clearly the biggest favourite beforehand.
He is best on this kind of rallies, has extensive experience from Estonia including last year in same car (only WRC2 driver except Huttunen om same car) and has done extensive testing/development for this rally.
Others have pros and cons with Gryazin and Mikkelsen being the closest on paper.
But as it's rally anything can happen.
WRC3 cars like Lukyanuk will surely benefit from start posistion on first pass (also shown last year), might suffer on second.
Usually I´m wrong with these but I don´t see Østberg as fastest driver in Estonia.
We will see.
You dont have to be outright fastest to win a rally. We've seen it a lot lately.