Someone will become World Rally champion for the first time this weekend, but who will it be?
Elfyn Evans, Sami Pajari and Oliver Solberg all start Rally Italy Sardinia, the final round of the 2026 World Rally Championship, with a shot at the title.
While it’s the first time since the year 2000 where a new world champion is guaranteed to be crowned at the decider, it’s far from the first time three different drivers arrived at the final event with the opportunity to become world number one.
1992
Contenders: Carlos Sainz (Toyota), Juha Kankkunen (Lancia) & Didier Auriol (Lancia)
Didier Auriol broke records in 1992, becoming the first driver ever to win six events in a single season.
His fellow Frenchman named Sébastien saw about upping that particular bar over the succeding years, but the point is the Lancia man probably should’ve claimed the 1992 crown.
Instead, a run of poor events brought Toyota’s Sainz back into play come the finale in Great Britain, while Auriol’s team-mate and reigning champion Kankkunen also retained a shot thanks to his consistent campaign.
Sainz held a two-point lead over Kankkunen and a three-point advantage over Auriol ahead of the RAC and repellled the pressure to lead the rally through the opening two legs.
Auriol gave chase but a spark plug disintegrated in his engine bay and forced him out. Title dream over.
Kankkunen then hit a rock in Scotland, but Sainz was on course for victory anyway. Controlling the rally from the front, the Spaniard claimed his second of two titles by 10 points over Kankkunen with Auriol finishing 23 back.
2003
Contenders: Sébastien Loeb (Citroën), Petter Solberg (Subaru) & Carlos Sainz (Citroën)
Sadly, 2003 should’ve been a four-way title fight, but points leader Richard Burns blacked out on his way to the event and was forced to withdraw on medical grounds. Freddy Loix, who had signed for Peugeot in 2004, was drafted in for Burns.
That left just three men in the race, but very quickly that dissipated to two with Citroën’s Sainz suffering an accident on shakedown that ruled him out of the competitive event.
It was down to the two ‘young guns’ to dispute the world title: Loeb and Solberg.
The duo had done battle plenty of times over the course of the year, especially in Australia where Solberg beat Loeb’s Xsara to a close-fought victory.
Loeb – who along with Sainz led Solberg by a point – had the pressure to deliver Citroën its first ever manufacturers’ title in its first full season in the WRC which undoubtedly tempered his risks. But Subaru’s Solberg was superb to the degree you sense he’d have won anyway.
On stages local to co-driver Phil Mills, and on a rally he won the previous year, the Norwegian beat Loeb by 43.6s to lift the title by just one point – and retrospectively earn the distinction as the only driver to beat Loeb across a full world championship season.
2018
Contenders: Sébastien Ogier (M-Sport Ford), Thierry Neuville (Hyundai), Ott Tänak (Toyota)
The ‘decider down under’ was a genuinely tantalizing showdown between three titans of the late 2010s, and represented the first time Ogier had ever been taken to the final round in a championship tussle.
Victory in Wales, and second to Loeb in Spain, set Ogier up for success in Australia, with a three-point advantage over Hyundai’s Neuville who’d led the championship through the mid-season, and Toyota’s Tänak who’d produced a devastating run of victories in the title run-in. Tänak, though, started Australia 23 points adrift.
While the event was ultimately won by Jari-Matti Latvala (the Finn’s final victory in the WRC), with Hayden Paddon claiming the runner-up spot, the title battle took center stage.
Ogier and the Ford Fiesta WRC weren’t the fastest package that year but he was the smartest, and while Tänak upheld his end of the bargain to lead into the final day, overnight rain caught him out as he slithered into a tree.
Neuville, meanwhile, had suffered a difficult event, and in a bid to keep his dwindling hopes alive ripped a wheel off his i20 Coupe and also retired.
Ogier cruised to fifth place to seal his sixth successive world title.
2025
Contenders: Elfyn Evans (Toyota), Sébastien Ogier (Toyota) & Kalle Rovanperä (Toyota)
Three Toyota team-mates also disputed the world title between them last year, but only one of the contenders (Evans) remains the same.
Ogier was hunting Evans down in 2025 despite missing three events (Sweden, Kenya and Estonia), leaving the then eight-time champion just three points behind his team-mate going into the Saudi Arabia finale.
Victory at the Central European Rally boosted Rovanperä’s chances, but he was the rank outsider with a 24-point disadvantage to overturn.
Due to severe road cleaning, none of the title contenders featured near the top of the leaderboard on the opening two days, with all three occupying seventh to ninth places after Thursday.
A tire change for Evans didn’t help his cause, but nevertheless Ogier was in the ascendancy and produced a championship-winning drive on the penultimate stage to rise from sixth to third, claiming a record-equalling ninth title in the process.
Evans, who had led the series for all but four of the events, missed out by just four points with Rovanperä signing off from rallying in third.
