WRC Stars Test South Estonia Roads Ahead of Rally Estonia
Ahead of this month's Rally Estonia, several World Rally Championship stars have been testing in South Estonia. Championship leader Elfyn Evans and Adrien Fourmaux are also using the South Estonia Rally to gain extra mileage before the main event.
Rally Estonia takes place later this month, and some of the biggest names from the World Rally Championship have already been racking up test kilometers around South Estonia this week ahead of round nine of the championship. They have also been taking advantage of the South Estonia Rally to get additional mileage before WRC Rally Estonia, which takes place in two weeks' time.
On Thursday, current championship leader Elfyn Evans (Wales) and Adrien Fourmaux (France) were out on the stages in Haanja, Võru County, and ERR Sport caught up with them.
Evans, who is chasing his maiden WRC title after finishing runner-up in five of the past six seasons, completed testing near Haanja. In addition to his test day, the Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT driver is also competing in the South Estonia Rally, which started Friday, to log even more kilometers on the region's fast gravel roads.
"It's perfect timing really, of course it's quite specific to rallying in this part of the world, so the fact that we can do some extra mileage and drive the car in rally conditions is the perfect warmup for Rally Estonia," Evans said Thursday. "We also need to get ourselves up to speed coming off the back of some slower rallies and of course it's been a bit of a shock to arrive in Estonia with the high speeds," he added.
The preceding rounds had mostly been in warmer climes too, with the last race having been in Greece late last month, meaning an adjustment to Estonian weather conditions is also needed. "As you can see it's quite wet so quite difficult conditions actually; really changeable grip, so let's see how it'll be for the rally, to see if this is going to be really useful or not. Of course with being first on the road we'd hope for some dry conditions to work in that environment, but of course you can't pick the weather, so its like this today," he went on.
Alongside Evans, Fourmaux, who drives for Hyundai Shell Mobis World Rally Team and has claimed one podium finish so far this WRC season, told ERR he is a big fan of Estonia's gravel roads. "It's a bit of a shock when we jump from the Greece rally to here, it's clearly a big step; for me it takes about 40k[ilometers] to get used to the drive again. It's fantastic, the performance of the Rally1 car. The aerodynamics of the Rally1 car and its ability on these roads give one of the best feelings you can ever experience in a rally car," the Frenchman added.
The South Estonia Rally runs from Friday through Saturday evening. Rally Estonia gets underway in two weeks. Rally Estonia became a full WRC calendar event in 2020 and has been staged every season since then, save for 2024 when it was replaced by Rally Latvia.
