Three weeks earlier, over 12,500km north-west, Jari-Matti Latvala stood shrivelled before the media.
The world titles, he thought, had gone. He even went as far as to suggest that all Toyota could do now was try and score more rally wins.
Twenty-one days is a long time in motorsport. Chile, clearly, is a long way from Greece. But Hyundai is no longer a long way away from Toyota.
On Sunday Latvala stood tall.
His post-Acropolis comments were riddled with emotion: “I can raise up my hand,” he confided in DirtFish. “I was more negative than I should have been in Greece.
“When Ogier had crashed, I actually didn’t realize that he’s able to come back from the stage which a little bit helped the situation.”
Emotion remained post Chile, but only the type that made Latvala smile.
Latvala had plenty of reason to smile after his team's result in Chile
“We had a bit of a talk inside the team before coming here and we tried to make everybody believe that we still have a chance,” he shared.
“And I think this showed that the work we did here, that we still have a chance and this proves it – that we have a chance.”
There simply was no better way to respond than by claiming a maximum points haul in Chile. First and second in the rally; first and second after Saturday; first and second in Super Sunday and first and second on the powerstage.
In one gobble, Toyota more than halved Hyundai’s lead.
“This gives a big boost and motivation for the team,” Latvala grinned.
So it should. But how was Toyota finally able to turn a misfiring championship challenge into a masterclass?
Surface slowed Hyundai
On multiple occasions throughout the weekend, Hyundai technical director François-Xavier Demaison (Hyundai management’s media spokesperson in Cyril Abiteboul’s absence) referred to this stage of the championship as “money time”.
If so, Hyundai failed to cash-in in Chile. The balance sheet was certainly skewed heavily in one direction.
Hyundai had its weakest event of the season in terms of stage wins
Hyundai stage wins in Chile? One.
M-Sport stage wins in Chile? Two
Toyota stage wins in Chile? Thirteen.
Hyundai’s wasn’t able to get the i20 N Rally1 to switch on. Ott Tänak’s competitive run to second overnight on Friday proved to be a slight mirage, and certainly didn’t tally with his feeling from behind the wheel.
Phrases like “I really struggled to find any kind of feeling in the car” and “I said to the engineers that top-six, top-eight is maximum, it’s not driving at all” didn’t point to a driver who was oozing confidence.
And don’t forget, prior to the weekend Tänak was undefeated in Chile.
The tone was similar from Thierry Neuville’s car: “The pace wasn’t there, the feeling wasn’t good. We didn’t have any fun out there today,” he said after Friday.
Come the end of the weekend, the Belgian labeled it “a very tough weekend as a team” where “generally we were missing speed and we couldn’t get the car really working all weekend long. And especially Toyota was stronger than us in all kind of conditions”.
Tänak, like Neuville, didn't find much confidence from his i20 in Chile
Tänak’s verdict was equally damning: “It just didn’t work for us. Since the shakedown, actually, it was a bit of a struggle, but anyway, it seems like this kind of smooth surface like Finland or here is something where we struggle with the car and we definitely need to look more seriously into it.”
The good news for Hyundai is the gravel season is done; Tarmac’s next and the i20 won the Monte and could – maybe even should – have won in Croatia too.
“It’s a long time since we’ve been on Tarmac, but normally this year actually on Tarmac it’s not been too bad,” Tänak surmised.
“We definitely need to prepare well as the fight is really on.”
Hyundai’s off-par performance undoubtedly helped Toyota, but it equally got things absolutely right.
“Yeah, it just went our way,” Elfyn Evans noted. “I think we had a good car and yeah we all felt good in it.
“Obviously, everybody did a great job. Speed was good with everybody, so it was nice to see.”
This fight will absolutely go the distance. And it’s not the only one.
WRC2 gets political
Sadly, WRC2 was more like a courtroom drama than a sporting contest in Chile. Nobody likes to see matters settled in the stewards room, but the stakes were simply too high to let this one slide.
Normally, Oliver Solberg’s slow puncture would’ve been the turning point: “I was leading, comfortable and everything,” he said, “but then I started to feel something going down and was like ‘ah maybe it’s just slippery.’ It took like 4km before I got a puncture, so it was a really slow puncture.
“Maybe the valve or something I don’t know… but yeah I don’t know. The tire is fine, I have the tire in the boot and there’s no damage to it so I honestly don’t know.”
But Solberg’s bewilderment would grow.
Having changed the offending tire, Solberg set off again at a strong pace – but did so pulling just in front of Yohan Rossel. He then began to pull away, but Rossel was left miffed about being caught in Solberg’s dust as well as battling through the fog that had descended.
That night, he lodged a request to be given a notional time for the stage – a request that was granted. But Solberg clearly was not impressed that the stewards had decided to give Rossel as much as 40s back – a decision that vaulted him from third to first.
The plot thickened when Rossel was retrospectively docked 10s for a jump-start on the stage before, but being informed of that lit a fire beneath Solberg.
Solberg was aggrieved by how much time the Chile stewards awarded Rossel on SS11
“Well he should have much more than that, that’s for sure,” he said at the end of SS15. “He shouldn’t be where he is with that time he got yesterday.”
“But anyway, I do my best.”
Chatting to DirtFish at the end of the rally, the matter was set to escalate: “I will try absolutely everything in my power to get a better position – to have a bigger chance to win [the championship],” said Solberg.
Sure enough, an appeal was submitted into ‘stewards decision 5’, with the content of ‘stewards decision 6’ set to reveal all.
Inside lay good news for Rossel; bad news for Solberg. The appeal was rejected, so now Solberg must sit and watch as Rossel, and Sami Pajari, each now have golden chances to nab the title from under his nose.
That in itself is a compelling sporting narrative, but amazingly wasn’t the only off-stage drama in Concepción with eight-time world champion Sébastien Ogier’s clear stance against the FIA taking shape across the first day of Rally Chile.
His good friend Tänak also joined in as both felt concerned by being “told from the top of the FIA that we need to shut our mouths”, to use Ogier’s wording.
This was all in relation to Ogier’s suspended €30,000 fine for stage-end comments he made in Greece, and Formula 1 world champion Max Verstappen’s ‘community service’ punishment for using the F-word in a press conference.
Ogier’s silence made the point the loudest (as did him just so happening to need to use only his middle finger to scratch his face when being filmed by WRC TV…) but it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out from here.
But the contest that usually gets us all more excited than any other is looking more and more inevitable by the stage.
Neuville’s nearly there
With 60 points left to play for, even Elfyn Evans – a man considered to have been out of the title race since August – can still become World Rally champion this year.
As could Ogier. As could Tänak.
But none of them are talking like champions-to-be.
Neuville has been the shining light in year's world title fight
Although he didn’t fully throw himself out of the race, Evans was talking about trying to “help the team as much as possible” before a wheel had even been turned in Chile.
After another weekend where he showed devastating speed but couldn’t net the result to match, Ogier was drawn to conclude “it looks like” his bid is over.
Tänak has by the far the greatest chance of pulling it off, 12 points up the road from Ogier and now under 30 (a maximum points score) off the summit. But he’s made references to Hyundai’s manufacturers’ bid being “more important” to him.
One by one, the towels are being thrown in. At least verbally. Ogier tried the opposite tactic in Greece and that didn’t work either.
Neuville’s world title is now something of an inevitability. The lack of any doubt or hint of a suggestion that he might bottle it is a true marker of how far he’s come in recent years.
The players have swapped positions since 2017 – perhaps Neuville’s most famous capitulation. This time it’s Thierry who’s driving with a calculator in hand, and Sébastien with the stopwatch.
Yet again in Chile he used his head and produced another calculated drive that has earned him a real chance of clinching a maiden world title at CER.
So while all of the other battles are heating up, this one has cooled down.
“Let’s say it’s all up to Thierry,” Tänak mused. “It’s his to lose at the moment.”
