Estonia ERC: Sirmacis inherits victory after late crash for Lukyanuk
Ralfs Sirmacis took his second main class ERC win in just three rallies, taking advantage of long-time leader Alexey Lukyanuk crashing in the penultimate stage.
The duo dominated the event, having won 15 out of 16 stages with Lukyanuk taking the lead in SS1 and staying there until SS15.
Sirmacis was the only one to stay close the Russian but the gap was slowly increasing to as much as 28 seconds by SS14.
However, Lukyanuk failed to complete the subsequent run and was forced to retire, giving Sirmacis the victory.
Kajetan Kajetanowicz soon fell out of contention for the win after struggling with power steering issues and receiving a 10-second time penalty for a gearbox change.
He ended up 1m34.5s adrift as he collected his fourth podium of the season.
2012 Estonian Rally champion Rainer Aus repeated his result from last year by taking third, while fellow local frontrunner Egon Kaur retired with engine issues.
Raul Jeets finished fourth, followed by the Skodas of Jaroslaw Koltun and Lukasz Habaj.
ERC Junior winner Miko-Ove Niinemae finished seventh overall ahead of Russian Alexander Mikhailov.
Opel juniors Marijan Griebel and Chris Ingram completed the top 10.
Top 10 results
Pos. | Driver / Co-Driver | Car | Time/Delay |
1 |
Ralfs Sirmacis Maris Kulss |
Skoda | 1h44m16.2s |
2 |
Kajetan Kajetanowicz Jaroslaw Baran |
Ford | +1m34.5s |
3 |
Rainer Aus Simo Koskinen |
Mitsubishi | +3m44.8s |
4 |
Raul Jeets Andrus Toom |
Skoda | +4m03.4s |
5 |
Jaroslaw Koltun Ireneusz Pleskot |
Ford | +5m02.3s |
6 |
Lukasz Habaj Piotr Wos |
Ford | +8m07.6s |
7 |
Miko-Ove Niinemae Martin Valter |
Peugeot | +10m36.0s |
8 |
Alexander Mikhailov Normunds Kokins |
Mitsubishi | +11m00.3s |
9 |
Marijan Griebel Pirmin Winklhofer |
Opel | +11m15.8s |
10 |
Chris Ingram Elliott Edmondson
|
Opel | +11m20.5s |
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