Don’t worry, we aren’t living in 2025 – but Elfyn Evans did just win Rally Sweden ahead of Takamoto Katsuta.
Only this time, the Toyota pair were joined by another member of their team instead of Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville, as Toyota’s domination of the World Rally Championship continued.
There’s plenty to unpack from Rally Sweden 2026, including a brief stall in a burgeoning career, a hole growing ever deeper and an M-Sport narrative repeating itself.
Here’s what we learned from round two of the rallying world tour:
Evans shows his hand
The consistency is remarkable.
At last year’s Monte Carlo Rally, Elfyn Evans finished second and scored 26 championship points. He backed that up with a victory in Sweden and all 10 bonus points.
At this year’s Monte Carlo Rally, Elfyn Evans finished second and scored 26 championship points. He backed that up with a victory in Sweden, and nine of 10 bonus points.
There’s just a one-point difference between Evans’ 2025 and 2026 campaigns so far, outlining his metronomic dependability. But the big difference this time was the statement Evans sent across the Toyota service area.
Oliver Solberg has hogged the headlines of late (and rightly so) but for him to make good on the hype, he’s going to have to get the better of a man who simply does not miss.
Esapekka Lappi’s last WRC rally before his return last week in Sweden was 17 months ago. Elfyn Evans’ last non-points score in the WRC was before then.
He was a level above the rest in Sweden, and continues to be the most reliable driver in the championship. Yet again, Evans will be in this title race ’til the bitter end.
Solberg suffers his first setback
Oliver Solberg’s 100% record at the wheel of a Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 in the WRC was never going to last forever, and he faced the handicap of running first on the road for the first time in his career.
But it was still a surprise to see him off the podium, and behind all of his team-mates, at his home event in Sweden – a rally he’s won for three successive seasons in WRC2.
It’s hard to ascertain what would’ve been on the table for Solberg were he more experienced at leading the world championship and facing the road cleaning handicap, but as it was an erratic SS3 put paid to any hopes of a result beyond fourth.
Championship wise that’s no disaster – he trails Evans by only 13 points – but there was a slight degree of impatience to this drive that exposed a weakness within Solberg for the first time since he’s driven a Rally1 Toyota.
Neuville (and Hyundai)’s slump deepens
When your WRC career dates back to 2012, it’s quite the statement to claim that right now is the toughest point of your career. But those were Thierry Neuville’s exact words on Friday.
Monte Carlo was a bit of a disaster, but the hope remained that Sweden would be better. It needed to be.
But it wasn’t. Neuville’s mood did increase as the weekend progressed; victory on the powerstage a nice boost. The fact, however, remains taht man and machine aren’t working in harmony just now and that, somehow, has to change.
That synergy any rally driver craves is missing for Neuville right now. And of course it doesn’t help that the tool he’s trying to bond with isn’t as consistently capable as the one winning all the rallies these days.
The expectation was for Tarmac to be the problem, not snow as well. Solutions are needed – and fast – at Hyundai to prevent Toyota running away with both titles again.
Lappi proves a smart choice
He may not have finished as the top Hyundai driver, but that’s what Esapekka Lappi was in Sweden.
Perhaps that’s exactly what was expected of him as the event winner in 2024 who’d won the last seven of his rallies (with a Rally2 car in Finland) and had a good road position on Friday.
But to come back to the WRC after a year and a half away, driving the Hankook tires and the ‘Evo’ spec i20 N Rally1 for the first time, and beat his championship-chasing team-mates (on speed) was a job well done.
The Lappi that returned was very different to the dejected one who left the service park in 2024, and it showed. The difference? “I’m not so stressed because I’m not driving for my future anymore. I just come here to try to do my best and enjoy and do the job that I’m hired for. And then for the future, I don’t care!”
He even voluntarily let Fourmaux ahead on the final morning because he needs the points, and Lappi doesn’t. That’s exactly the kind of driver Hyundai wants, and needs, this year.
Armstrong’s stock continues to rise
Two swallows don’t make a summer (if you’ll allow us to adapt a common adage…) but the evidence is building that Jon Armstrong has the potential to be the real deal.
His mistake on the first stage – massively outbraking himself into a junction and suffering power loss thereafter due to snow in his radiator – was costly as he was immediately then on the back foot leaderboard-wise. But the 31-year-old kept plugging away and outshone his full-time team-mate, Josh McErlean, just as he did in Monte Carlo with some eye-catching pace on Saturday especially.
Mãrtiņš Sesks still looks like the M-Sport driver most likely to snare a podium or win stages (he nicked one in Sweden), but Armstrong’s strength is in his attitude and his rapid rate of learning. He simply doesn’t look like a driver with just two Rally1 starts under his belt, but that’s what he is.
That only serves to mount pressure on McErlean, who ironically did just that to his team-mate last season, Grégoire Munster.
Pajari back on track
Crashing twice in the same rally is one thing. To do so without showing really any pace is quite another.
Sami Pajari’s Monte Carlo Rally had the potential to break him. But Toyota stood by him and reaped the rewards with a podium result – the perfect way to bounce back.
Pajari’s gratitude towards his team for that support was obvious – twice he thanked them in his post-powerstage interview, looking down the lens with his hands together – and it was well-founded, as it allowed the Finn to feel at ease and get back to his podium-scoring form of late 2025.
Now, Monte Carlo can be registered as just a blip and Pajari can lock back in on chasing more podiums and that first win; a key pre-season target he pinpointed.
