Tanak dominates to Rally Sweden victory

Top 15 results at Rally Sweden

Ott Tanak has secured a dominant victory at Rally Sweden for Toyota Gazoo Racing to take the lead in the World Rally Championship.

The Estonian driver claimed his seventh career WRC win, and his first triumph at Rally Sweden, to cement his spot as a title contender in 2019.

After trading the overall classification lead with M-Sport Ford’s Teemu Suninen over the opening stages, Tanak took control from SS9 before seeing the Finn drop out of contention after coming off on SS10.

Throughout Saturday’s action Tanak gradually built a comfortable lead over Hyundai’s Andreas Mikkelsen to just under one minute to ease to victory.

Mikkelsen had a frustrating final day as he slipped from joint-second with Esapekka Lappi to fourth place and off the podium. Lappi duly secured second place for Citroen, making up for his disaster start with retirement at Rallye Monte-Carlo, with Thierry Neuville producing a lowkey but consistent performance to take third place for Hyundai.

With Mikkelsen missing out he did keep M-Sport Ford’s Elfyn Evans off him in fifth place, with just 2.8s splitting the pair at the finish, as Kris Meeke continued to build momentum for Toyota in sixth place.

Nine-time WRC champion Sebastien Loeb took seventh place as he adapted to the Hyundai i20 with local favourite Pontus Tidemand taking eighth place on just his second premier class outing for M-Sport Ford ahead of Janne Tuohino.

Defending WRC champion Sebastien Ogier suffered an early exit for Citroen after getting stuck in a snow bank on SS6, restarting under Rally 2 rules, with Marcus Gronholm, Jari-Matti Latvala (both Toyota) and Suninen (M-Sport Ford) also suffering a similar fate.

Tanak completed his Rally Sweden domination with victory on the Power Stage to maximise his points haul with Neuville second, Evans third, Ogier fourth and Lappi in fifth to pick up the final point.

Ole Christian Veiby secured the WRC 2 class victory for Volkswagen, and ninth place overall, with a comfortable margin over Mads Ostberg for Citroen. Janne Tuohino (Ford) split the WRC 2 top two to take the final point position to round out the top ten.