Nobody wanted that fight to end the way it did.
Stage after stage, Oliver Solberg was chipping away at Sébastien Ogier’s lead. With two to go, just 2.2s split the pair of Toyoats.
But then Solberg misjudged a jump, ran wide, hit an Armco, ripped a wheel off and retired his GR Yaris.
Ogier was then in the clear, backing off on the powerstage to record a 19.9 second victory over Elfyn Evans in a Toyota 1-2-3-4.
“It”s been a super weekend for the whole team,” Ogier told DirtFish. “First of all, I think we need to thank Toyota for the amazing car we had to drive this weekend.
“The intensity in the stages against my team-mates was something, you know, we really wanted to see when we come in a rally car. And yeah, of course, I’m happy to come out as the winner.
“In the same time, I would have loved to share the podium with Oliver. I’m pretty sure it would have been a close call. Hard to say in which direction, but that’s a tough part of our sport. It can turn in the wrong direction very quickly.
“So [it’s] tough for him today, but he’s still very young and I’m sure we’ll have some more battles together.”
Solberg was putting Ogier under pressure, but the nine-time champion never seemed perturbed. He admitted he had more pace in reserve if necessary, but he didn’t deem the risk worthwhile.
“Well, the pressure was there, it’s always there, but that’s part of the game, and that’s one of the parts I love, actually, to be, you know… that’s bringing me to give the best out of me,” he said.
“And, yeah, at the end of the day, we can see that we never panicked this weekend, even when the gap was getting closer and closer. I think we still had some words to say towards the end of the rally.
“Even in this stage where Oliver crashed, the speed was showing that we were still doing the job we needed to do,” Ogier added, referencing the fact he was 0.6s ahead of Solberg at their last comparable split on SS17.
Ogier led the rally from SS2 right the way to the end
“I think there was still a possibility to go a little faster, but you had to increase the risk level. And yeah, that’s never really my approach to rallying. I only take the risk when I really need to.”
Toyota won all 17 of Rally Islas Canarias’ stages and would’ve been on for a top-five lockout before Solberg retired.
Deputy team principal Juha Kankkunen was surprised the team’s advantage over Hyundai was so large.
“I was a bit surprised. I thought that, you know, they will be much closer and it will be much tougher fight,” Kankkunen told DirtFish.
“Last year we did the same: we were first, second, third and fourth, so [I thought] that they [would] have improved. But we did good work, did a good test and we managed to get all the setup and the cars were working so well that it was a good result anyway.”
