Tanak wins as Neuville stays top

Estonian Ott Tanak (pic) won Rally of Finland for Toyota while Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville finished ninth but retained the overall world championship lead.

The victory, over gravel roads in the fastest round of the calendar, was Tanak’s second of the season after Argentina in April and he won by 32.7 seconds on Sunday.

Tanak also won the final power stage for a bonus five points.

Norwegian Mads Ostberg was second for Citroen, denying Toyota a onetwo finish by beating Finland’s JariMatti Latvala by 2.8 seconds.

France’s reigning champion Sebastien Ogier was fifth for MSport Ford.

After eight of 13 rounds, Neuville has a 21 point lead over Ogier with the Belgian on 153 – and picking up two power stage points – and his rival now on 132.

Hyundai lead MSport in the constructors’ standings by 26 points.

“Road position has really dictated a lot this weekend,” said Neuville.

“Even without our mistake on Friday, when we misread a pace note, I don’t think we would have been any higher up the classification.

“The main target was not losing too many points to Ogier, which we did to the best of our ability. We could only control what’s in our hands. We gave it everything we could in the Power Stage and it was good to take a couple of extra points.”

The next round is in Germany on Aug 1619. — Reuters