Estonia’s rising star Ott Tanak achieved another milestone in his FIA World Rally Championship career with his maiden stage victory on asphalt on stage 10 of ADAC Rallye Deutschland.
The slightly surprised M-Sport Ford driver beat second-placed Dani Sordo by 2.1 seconds, and in the process moved up to fourth overall, ahead of Mads Ostberg.
"It’s pretty good, eh? It shows I can drive on Tarmac as well. At least we’ve done some quite okay stage times," said Tanak, who added that his mentor Markko Martin had told him that rallying on asphalt might be more fun than he expected.
In the overall standings, Sebastien Loeb extended his lead over Jari-Matti Latvala to 1m38.5s.
"We were a bit afraid before the start as it started to rain on the road section and we had hard tyres and Jari-Matti had softs," said Loeb. "Okay, we have a big gap, but... Anyway it was dry and we were okay."
Latvala had gone for softs to be as safe in possible in the event of further rain, although the afternoon looks set to bring entirely dry stages.
The cautious tyre choice therefore cost Latvala nine seconds to the pursuing Mikko Hirvonen. That reduced the gap to 27s, but Hirvonen did not think he had much chance of catching Latvala.
"It’s getting closer, but I don’t think just with driving I can catch him," said Hirvonen. "But you never know what’s going to happen in a rally - a puncture or a mistake."
Hirvonen added that he was finally starting to feel more confident in his Citroen DS3 WRC’s handling in Germany.
"It’s better now, everything’s working and conditions were consistent," he said.