The finale to the 2026 World Rally Championship finale was so breathless, it was easy to miss some things we’d normally all be talking about.
So beyond the obvious world championship decider that swung in favor of Elfyn Evans, here’s what you might have missed from Rally Italy Sardinia:
Solberg won the rally
We’ve seen a few comments on social media referring to Oliver Solberg ‘DNF’ing from the event.
Yes, he gave away the championship title with a mistake, but he still won the rally – his first back-to-back victories in the WRC following success at the previous event in Chile.
His winning margin was 57.6 seconds over Sébastien Ogier, losing just 0.2s of that advantage on the powerstage despite going off.
Ogier broke a WRC record
Sébastien Ogier is the man with the most starts in WRC history, but he’s now also the man with the most podiums too.
Loeb started Sardinia level with the WRC’s other nine-time champion, Sébastien Loeb, on 120 podiums, but his runner-up finish last weekend moved him one clear on 121.
How many more will he add throughout the rest of his career?
Pajari finished just 6pts off
Sami Pajari quickly became the forgotten man in last week’s three-way title fight, as Oliver Solberg began his climb up the leaderboard, pressuring Elfyn Evans.
Pajari remained ahead of Evans throughout, but from second on the road was never able to make the same gains as Solberg.
But as that dramatic final day, and stage, unfolded, Pajari crept his way back into contention and actually only finished six points adrift of championship gold, and one point behind Solberg.
Almost identical top five
For the stat buffs out there, did you notice a pattern between the results of Rally Chile and Sardinia?
The entire top five was nearly identical.
Solberg won from Ogier ahead of Pajari, Adrien Fourmaux and Evans last week. In Chile. the same five drivers finished in the top five, only it was Fourmaux who made the podium with Pajari fourth.
Evans, of course, had to stop and change a puncture on the penultimate stage of both events, too.
Armstrong’s best finish
Jon Armstrong needed a weekend where he evaded the headlines, so he’ll be happy to find his name in this column we’re sure.
But seventh place in Sardinia actually marked the best WRC result of his career, right at the last.
The M-Sport driver threatened a higher profile result at points in the first half of the season, winning a stage in Greece. However after several mistakes, a clean drive was what he needed – and what he delivered.
Crazy WRC2 finish
WRC2 had even less prominence than normal on Sunday, with the first car onto the powerstage a Rally1 car rather than Rally2.
Normally, the leading WRC2 cars enter the final stage first to ensure the live TV audience capture the winner being crowned. But not in Sardinia.
And that’s a shame, because what a finish it was! Despite three punctures throughout the weekend, 2026 champion Robert Virves came within 0.7s of usurping Roope Korhonen, who completed the final two stages with just three brakes.
“After that, the powerstage was quite difficult to drive,” Korhonen told DirtFish, “but we tried our best and luckily it was enough. OK, quite a small gap, but a really good rally for us and a good way to end the season.”
Plethora of penalties
Several high profile drivers were handed penalties in Sardinia, for a variety of reasons.
Josh McErlean was given a five-minute time penalty for his engine change on Saturday night, as the unit fitted to his car was outside of his pool. Normally the penalty would be applied to the next event, but given this was the final event for this generation of car, it had to be applied to Sardinia.
Teemu Suninen had one minute added to his rally time for changing a punctured tire inside the control area between TC10 and SS10. Like M-Sport, this was clever play from Suninen and co-driver Janni Hussi as changing a tire on the stage would have cost them more time.
Solberg and co-driver Elliott Edmondson were also jointly fined €2000 for leaving an air filter cover at the side of the road on Saturday morning, while Adrien Fourmaux’s co-driver Alexandre Coria was reported to have adjusted his HANS device during SS12 after they stopped to change a puncture, but stewards were satisfied he was plugigng in the intercom lead instead and no penalty was therefore applied.
