What a difference a year makes.
In 2025 Oliver Solberg was the toast of the World Rally Championship service park as he waltzed to a breakthrough victory. Sami Pajari didn’t even win a stage, held back by a power issue.
This year? He won the first nine stages in a row, 12 across the weekend and claimed his first career victory in the world championship. A year on from some questioning him after Solberg’s emergence, Pajari’s star has well and truly landed.
All five of Toyota’s drivers have now won a WRC round, and the GR Yaris Rally1 has topped the podium for the eighth time already this season.
Here’s what we learned from Rally Estonia 2026:
Pajari no longer the dark horse
The fact neither this result, nor the performance, came as a major surprise speaks volumes for the progress – and vein of form – Sami Pajari is in right now.
What was particularly impressive, however, was how effortless he made it seem, and how composed he was under pressure. He looked like a driver used to dominating rallies and leading from the word go, when in reality he’d done neither before in his Rally1 career.
In a season where predicting who the true championship contenders are has been tougher than ever, we’d be naive to discount Pajari – who moved to 33 points behind Elfyn Evans and just eight adrift of Takamoto Katsuta.
Can Pajari now do what Katsuta did earlier this season, and go back-to-back after sealing his first win?
“Normally I always prefer to be the underdog, basically chasing the others,” Pajari admitted. “But I guess now quite many can put me as the winning favorite before Rally Finland.
“OK we will see. I will try to do my best obviously once again, but let’s enjoy the moment before heading to Rally Finland.”
Solberg lays his building block
If Rally Estonia 2026 was a test for Oliver Solberg, he passed it with flying colors.
After a barren run of mistakes, retirements and confidence-sapping disappointment, Tartu could’ve been the worst place for Solberg to come next considering the majesty with which he conquered Rally Estonia 12 months ago.
In that sense, what did he have to gain? All he could do was match last year’s result, not better it.
Confidence was the answer, as well as a healthy haul of championship points. And the Swede banked both, admitting he wasn’t in the same “mood” as the all-conquering Pajari, but building his comfort, and trust in himself, behind the wheel again was important; as was collecting all 10 Super Sunday bonus points that left him just one point worse off than his team-mate from the weekend.
Solberg showed in Estonia that he’s learned from his errors earlier in the season. Now the aim is to do so consistently.
Virves a huge WRC2 favorite
Another WRC2 victory for the season, another win on home soil, and €25,000 better off to boot, all while his young daughter attended her first every rally – Rally Estonia 2026 was a fantastic weekend for Robert Virves.
Mikko Heikkilä won the opening stage, but thereafter it was Virves’ Škoda which led – despite intense pressure from his rivals. Yet again, the Estonian proved what he’s made of: winning more stages than anyone else and not putting a single foot wrong while at it.
Three victories from three starts puts Virves just four points shy of Roope Korhonen’s WRC2 lead, and he’s started two fewer rallies than Korhonen. Win, or even notch up a podium, next time out in Finland, and it’ll soon become a question of when, not if, Virves becomes the first Škoda driver since Andreas Mikkelsen (2023) to lift the WRC2 title.
The onus is on his rivals to stop him, but how do they do that when Virves is in this kind of form? Perhaps they should just listen to the words of the Rally Estonia anthem centered on him: go full send.
Momentum swings against Ogier
Sébastien Ogier was the man everybody was talking about in Greece, after he slashed Evans’ championship lead and announced his intentions to fight for history and a 10th world title.
That momentum quickly swung against him in Estonia.
The reigning champion beat Evans on the road, finishing fifth with Evans sixth, but the series leader produced a strong Super Sunday performance to snare seven bonus points, while Ogier could only register four.
That means instead of making inroads, Ogier actually lost points to Evans (one) in Estonia, and started two cars behind him in the running order.
Ogier was keen not to continually hide behind the excuse, but his lack of familiarity with the event did count against him last weekend. He’d never been there in a Rally1 car before. But this was a rare occasion where Ogier wasn’t the sheriff in town, although he was keen to highlight the strength of his team-mate’s drive.
For his part, Evans wasn’t thrilled by his performance but managed to more than double his championship lead from 11 to 25 points – assisted greatly by Takamoto Katsuta’s delamination on Friday afternoon that restricted his haul to just one point in Estonia.
Fourmaux’s key advantage over Neuville
Adrien Fourmaux’s one minute time penalty for a seatbelt infringement in Greece dropped him level with team-mate Thierry Neuville in the championship on 95 points.
Somehow, after 18 flat-out stages, the Hyundai pair remain glued together on points after Estonia too: now both on 111 points. And only 5.9 seconds separated them on the rally, in Fourmaux’s favor.
Neuville rescued strong points with a committed powerstage run (second fastest), but Fourmaux’s clear strength over his team-mate became more apparent last week. He’s a much faster starter.
While Fourmaux was as high as second after the first stage, Neuville never got out of fourth place – sitting there for 94% of the event. In the end, that made the difference. Neuville took longer to dial himself in while Fourmaux licked the stamp as soon as he could.
“After we were very close, but it’s at the beginning where we were faster,” Fourmaux surmised.
While on other events this year Neuville has achieved the bigger results (for one reason or another), that trend is not exclusive to Estonia.
Estonia’s a gold-standard WRC event, but…
Rally Estonia’s organization and innovation is second-to-none in the WRC, and the roads are gorgeous for the WRC drivers to attack.
Year on year, the event has moved its own goalposts, as Ogier observed on his first visit in five years in 2026.
“I think the rally developed a lot positively,” he told DirtFish on the recce. “It’s very clear the organizer always did a lot of effort to give us the best roads, but for me I see a big step compared to five years ago, very nice road condition. I’m happy to be back here.”
His positivity continued in regards to the sensation of driving the event, but the nine-time champion was frustrated by an inability for crews to truly fight each other – believing that road position more or less decided everybody’s stage times.
The stats back Ogier up: there were no position changes inside the top five, at all, after SS2, while a similar theme developed in 2023 with no top-five position changes for either of the last two legs. Last year, the same drivers featured in the top five but Hyundai team-mates Neuville and Ott Tänak regularly traded second and third spots.
For a rally so thrilling, it’s not electric in terms of on-stage scraps. But it does have a knack for delivering fascinating narratives. Kalle Rovanperä, Solberg and now Pajari have all taken their maiden WRC victory in Estonia, and the event has only hosted the WRC six times.
