Ott Tanak clinched a 18.7s victory from Hyundai’s Craig Breen at Rally Sweden to end M-Sport’s almost 13-month World Rally Championship win drought since Ypres Rally Belgium win last August. Tanak started the rally strongly ending Thursday’s opening stage just 1.6s behind Toyota’s Kalle Rovanperä, but the 2019 world champion stormed into the rally lead by the time crews returned to the service park on Friday morning. Breen, returning to the WRC in his first event of a partial season, emerged as Tanak’s nearest rival, with his advantage growing to 5.7s, before Tanak fought back across Saturday afternoon. Tanak polished off Sunday’s three stages to score the win: Breen was unable to reel in Tanak over the final tests. Neuville won five stages but was locked in a battle with Rovanperä across Saturday and Sunday for what was the final podium spot: a mistake on the final stage almost proved costly but he managed to reach the finish in third, 20.0s adrift. Rovanperä found opening the roads tough going as he lost his Thursday night lead and dropped to as low as fifth, but was able to fight back on Saturday. The Finn hauled himself into a fight for the final podium spot with Neuville, after Hyundai’s Esapekka Lappi spun into a snowbank on Saturday’s Stage 13: he was stranded in the snowbank for seven minutes, which moved Rovanperä and Neuville into podium contention. At one point Neuville and Rovanperä shared third spot on Saturday evening before Neuville pulled 3.8s clear. Rovanperä briefly nibbled into the deficit on Sunday, before Neuville finally claimed the podium. Following the Hyundai’s team orders, Rovanperä secured fourth and only picked up three powerstage points. “The car is really s*** to drive, I lose so much time everywhere,” said Rovanperä.
“I don’t know if we have made mistake with the set up or it doesn’t work in this conditions but we need to find something. I’m understeering everywhere. I could be much faster but now I’m fighting a lot.” Home hero Oliver Solberg finished eighth overall after dominating the WRC2 class to start his championship campaign with a 42.3s victory over Ole Christian Veiby.
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