Elfyn Evans and Oliver Solberg will go into the final day of the 2026 World Rally Championship ‘virtually’ separated by six points in the race to win the drivers’ title, with a second puncture for Adrien Fourmaux on Rally Italy Sardinia giving Evans an opportunity to claw back more points.
At Saturday midday service the momentum had swung heavily in Solberg’s favour, having taken the lead and with Evans languishing in sixth place. The projected points gap, prior to Sunday points coming into play, had been reduced to only four points.
But Thierry Neuville ripping his left-rear wheel off in the first kilometer of the Lerno second pass while battling Solberg for first, then the last remaining Hyundai of Adrien Fourmaux suffering a second puncture in as many days on SS12, began to turn the tide back in Evans’ direction.
Fourmaux lost 1m46.1s as he stopped to change his left-rear wheel and was shellshocked at the finish; he’d already lost a chance of a first win on Friday and now his battle for second against Sébastien Ogier had been curtailed. More importantly for the title battle, both Sami Pajari and Elfyn Evans moved ahead into third and fourth respectively.
With the podium now a long shot Fourmaux elected to throw caution to the wind on Saturday’s final stage, which he won by 1.8s. Crucially though, it moved him back ahead of Evans immediately, with the pair separated by 6.4s heading into the final day of the season.
Out front Solberg’s lead over Ogier is a healthy 33.6s and he has only one goal on Sunday: score maximum points.
“All I can do is do my thing and so far we’re doing a great job,” said Solberg. “This morning was very important to show everyone what I’m here to do.
“Tomorrow is very simple, we need the 10 points. Hopefully Adrien can do his job, many people can do their job, we will do our job and see what happens.”
Today has been a tough day to hang in there with Oliver going so fast in the front.Elfyn Evans
Evans put a brave face on a tough penultimate day; his ability to make inroads to those ahead was blunted by sweeping away more loose gravel than his title rivals for the second day in a row.. He admitted that watching Solberg sprint away at the front of the field had been a test of his resolve.
“Adrien will not be far anyway so I don’t think it will be straightforward,” said Evans. “Today has been a tough day to hang in there with Oliver going so fast in the front but let’s see.”
Third-placed Sami Pajari, the last of the drivers still in contention for the drivers’ title, had a subdued day and is now completely in no-man’s land, 1m06.3s behind Ogier but 52.1s ahead of Fourmaux.
Pajari is on course to finish on 228 points before Sunday bonuses are factored in; even a maximum Sunday score for Pajari with no bonuses for Evans wouldn’t be enough as things stand, and that’s before bringing Solberg into the equation.
“It’s a bit like we are doing now, not in the top fight, and you just have to do what is left for you,” said Pajari. “Still the game is on, one more day to go, but it means we are safely through.”
Fourmaux has 6.4s in hand over Evans headed into the final day and plans to keep his pace up on Sunday, in case anything happens to the trio of GR Yaris Rally1 ahead of him and the chance to pick up silverware to end his season materializes.
Fourmaux was the only Hyundai to finish the day: Neuville ripped a wheel off and Sordo retired after the first Saturday stage complaining of back pain
“They will have the time to fight each other tomorrow,” said Fourmaux, referencing the title contenders.
He was also left perplexed that trying to manage puncture risk had failed him twice, while doing away with risk management entirely on the day-ending stage had delivered a clean run.
“That’s the pace I can have when I don’t look at anything,” said Fourmaux. “For me it’s very difficult to understand how it works with these tires. When you take care of it you get some punctures and when you go flat out you get nothing. It’s over my head sometimes. I try to be smart and it’s not working.
“I think we really have the pace to be much better than fourth now. We carry on, we took one position which is good for us tomorrow, we don’t know what can happen tomorrow with that fight so we can still maybe get a podium. It is the minimum reward I would say.”
Josh McErlean had been running a comfortable sixth overall but he ran wide and hit a tree on the second pass of Coiluna–Loelle, damaging the cooling on his Ford Puma Rally1.
Though repairs to stem a water leak on the road section between stages 12 and 13 got him through the day-ending Soloriche test, he went no further, retiring before service with a broken left-rear wheel sustained on SS13 independently of his earlier incident with the tree one stage earlier.
McErlean’s strife has promoted Takamoto Katsuta to seventh place, with the last of the Toyotas managing to extend his advantage over Jon Armstrong’s Puma to 17.3s.
Roope Korhonen took the lead of WRC2 ahead of fellow Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 runner Gus Greensmith, the pair separated by 19.6s. Teemu Suninen completes the WRC2 podium a minute further behind; the support class trio also round out the top 10 overall.
