Oliver Solberg won Rally Chile – his first World Rally Championship victory since the season-opening Monte Carlo Rally as championship leader Elfyn Evans fell to fifth.
Evans had been running second behind Toyota team-mate Solberg before stopping to change a tire on the penultimate stage cost him over two minutes, and dropped him down to fifth.
That benefitted both rally winner Solberg and Sami Pajari in terms of the championship, with the Finn moving up to fourth as Sébastien Ogier and Adrien Fourmaux completed the podium.
Evans retains his lead of the championship, but Pajari reduced the gap from 20 to 17 points with powerstage winner Solberg now just 21 adrift.
The result did, however, confirm Toyota as manufacturers’ champions for 2026, matching Lancia’s all-time WRC record of 10 titles.
Solberg, who took victory by 16.6 seconds, led the event for all but one of the stages – claiming the third victory of his WRC career.
“It’s been an unbelievable weekend,” said Solberg. “It’s been an up and down year but the team always supported and believed. Finally a little bit of luck on my side and I could just do my thing. This weekend was the perfect weekend. I am knackered now! Thank you very much to the whole team – finally!”
Ogier had been embroiled in a tight fight with fellow Frenchman Fourmaux all rally long, but made a decisive move on Saturday afternoon to repel his Hyundai rival.
Ogier beat Fourmaux by 16.7s, winning Super Sunday in the process.
Pajari couldn’t match the leading quartet in Chile but Evans’ misfortune meant he outscored him by three points – although was beaten by Evans to second on the powerstage by less than a tenth of a second.
“In this sport things can change really, really quickly but we still have a couple more races to do and the fight is still very open. It was unfortunate to not have the best pace this weekend, but we need to take the positives,” Pajari said.
Evans added: “It was looking pretty positive this morning but these things happen unfortunately. We keep at it. We’ll worry about the championship tomorrow, but for now we did what we could this weekend and it’ll be business as usual in Sardinia.”
Esapekka Lappi completed the top six on what could be his final WRC event, ahead of Josh McErlean who suffered a scare on Sunday morning when he outbraked himself over a crest, hit a bank and ripped the front bumper off his Ford Puma Rally1.
Thierry Neuville had been sixth after Friday but crashed out in fifth gear on Saturday’s first stage, failing to restart on Sunday. Takamoto Katsuta and Jon Armstrong finished the event but retired on Friday and Saturday respectively after mistakes.
Yohan Rossel claimed Lancia’s first WRC2 victory on gravel, and fourth of the year, by beating championship leader Robert Virves by 53s. Gus Greensmith completed the podium in his Toyota ahead of Taylor Gill.
Ali Türkkan finished second in Junior WRC to become this year’s champion, benefitting by the accident of points leader Calle Carlberg on Saturday.
