Rally drivers will often be called single-minded. Obsessed by their sole goal of winning the stage, rally or championship.
Normally, that means just one title is on their mind.
Of course there are exceptions. Sami Pajari’s focus was WRC2 last year and he managed to succeed, but he also deviated his attention (and flourished) when handed three opportunities in a Rally1 car.
And lest we forget Grégoire Munster, who drove a Rally3, Rally2 and Rally1 car at various points through the 2023 season. But the M-Sport driver’s focus, like Pajari 12 months later, was on WRC2.
So where is Diego Domínguez’s focus?
This year, the 24-year-old Paraguayan has announced a mammoth 13-round calendar in the World Rally Championship – meaning he’ll start every single round except Estonia. Some feat for a non-factory driver!
But here’s the real intrigue: Domínguez won’t just aim to win Junior WRC. He’s not just out to defend his WRC3 title. And he’s not merely dipping his toes into the WRC2 pool. He’s completing a full campaign in all three.
Domínguez has won WRC3 before and come close to topping Junior WRC, but never taken on WRC2 until now
One World Rally Championship season; three World Rally Championship titles potentially within his reach. That’s a very, very big program!
“It definitely is,” he smiles.
“It’s a huge challenge but we think that the main thing to get far in rallying is experience and there are still a lot of rallies for us to learn, especially Monte that we decided to do just maybe three weeks ago because it’s one of the most renowned rallies there is, if not the most in rallying.
“It’s a very demanding rally, it’s changing a lot. There was one guy that told me once that if a team is going to look for a driver, they’re going to look for a driver who already did Monte.
“We’re doing that rally to learn, get experience – we really won’t be looking that much to the results in Monte. And then juniors, we decided to do the full championship because it’s a lot cheaper than running a Rally2 car and we get the experience of running through all the stages again.”
This short answer already gives us an idea of Domínguez’s approach to not just 2025, but indeed his burgeoning career. What at first appears an ambitious and potentially bizarre program begins to make a lot more sense when you understand the motivating factors behind it.
Domínguez already has two seasons of WRC experience in a Ford Fiesta Rally3, culminating in three Junior WRC victories and a WRC3 title last season. Using this car to build his experiences of rallies unfamiliar to him (like Monte Carlo) makes a large degree of sense.
And so does the step up to WRC2. The Rally2 class, and championship, is the perfect place for aspiring drivers to prove themselves, and Domínguez has only started one rally in the Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 he’ll campaign this term (although does have Rally2 experience from the past to draw from).
Propping a Rally2 program up with Rally3 drives is a smart move – one that worked rather well for Pajari in 2022.
Winning all three titles isn’t necessarily the aim, as Domínguez admits top-fives would be a reasonable target in his first season. But he’s set himself up for his best possible chance.
“To be completely honest, I chose all the rallies for WRC2 where I could maybe potentially be on the podium or be close to the podium,” he says. “So the most reasonable scoring point rounds for me.
Domínguez's WRC2 schedule has been cleverly selected, although somewhat determined by the JWRC calendar
“Apart from Sardinia, where we normally have at least 30-35 Rally2s running, and Islas Canarias which is new to the calendar, so we really don’t know how many cars that will be there, we chose the rallies that it’s either new to everybody or just some rallies that I really enjoy, for example, Kenya.
“Plus, there are not many, many, many cars so they are good [rallies] to score points.”
As for Junior WRC and WRC3?
“For sure, I’m going to be pushing for it to win both championships,” he promises, “and do the best I can for WRC2.”
Domínguez’s 2025 calendar:
Monte Carlo (WRC3)
Sweden (Junior WRC/WRC3)
Safari (WRC2)
Islas Canarias (WRC2)
Portugal (Junior WRC/WRC3)
Sardinia (WRC2)
Acropolis (Junior WRC/WRC3)
Finland (Junior WRC/WRC3)
Paraguay (WRC2)
Chile (WRC2)
Central Europe (Junior WRC/WRC3)
Japan (WRC2)
Saudi Arabia (WRC2)
Domínguez predicts his busy schedule (see above) will be both a blessing and a potential curse for him this year.
Jumping from Rally2 to Rally3 cars is expected to be a challenge this season
“I think the most challenging thing will be stepping up and down from WRC2 to WRC3 because the cars are really not the same,” he says. “But definitely I think we’re gonna be gaining a lot of pace; a lot of just consistency of good pace during the whole year.
“And I think that may be just a bit of an advantage comparing to some of the other drivers, but maybe [only] when I’m doing WRC3 and Juniors. I think this is where I could take most advantage of that because if you really think about it in WRC2, there’s Oliver [Solberg] who really doesn’t need to be in the car a lot to be fast.
“[Yohan] Rossell, the same thing, [Nikolay] Gryazin… a lot of drivers will really just, they just step up on any car they want and they’re going to be fast.”
Solberg is a fantastic benchmark for Domínguez though, given he’s been the fastest driver in WRC2 for each of the past two seasons and will drive the same car as him.
“When I read the story about Oliver joining Toyota, I just instantly called Rogelio [Peñate], my co-driver, and we were just really, really happy for him to be on the same car as us because it really sets the benchmark for us,” Domínguez explains.
“That’s what we want, to compare ourselves against very fast drivers and just learn from them and really try to get to where they are, and why not ahead of them?”
Domínguez is not short of ambition, but he's not letting that ambition overtake him
A rally driving career would be nothing without ambition. But the risk can often be allowing that ambition to overtake reality.
Despite such a monstrous program, there’s no signs of that from Domínguez. It’s all been cleverly thought out and sensibly planned. For example, many would have expected him to start his home event, Rally Paraguay which debuts in the WRC later this year, in a Rally1 car.
But will he?
“No,” he confirms. “We had some discussion, some idea about it but to be fair it’s just really not really what I want at the moment.
“I think it’s just… maybe it’s not very far away I think, but for sure it’s just not what we need for my career at the moment. So we’ll just keep learning step by step and for sure we’ll get there some day.”
Really then, Domínguez is just as single-minded as the rest. Full focus is on becoming a fully-blown Rally1 driver in the future, just his approach is more creative than the norm.
