New world champion co-driver Scott Martin believes that, after so many near misses, 2026 was the year he and Elfyn Evans were meant to end their world title hoodoo.
Evans and Martin have an impressive record of placing first or second in the world championship in six of the past seven years. After being runners-up on five occasions, they finally clinched their maiden title in a dramatic finish in Sardinia.
With a 17-point lead over their closest challengers, Evans and Martin were clear favorites heading into the three-way showdown. Toyota’s British pairing had led the points going into the final rounds in 2020 and 2025 as well, only to lose out to Sébastien Ogier on both occasions.
This year, the Frenchman was out of contention. Talking to DirtFish’s David Evans on SPIN, The Rally Pod, Martin admitted that that encouraged him to believe this would be the year it all came good.
Martin said: “Without Ogier and his like absolute masterclass, you felt like the opportunity… and because of the [larger] points gap, and because of the season that we had built up, it just felt that it really should be now. You know, that this really was the year to do it.”
Throughout the year, Evans faced the considerable handicap of opening the road on every gravel event, as he had done for the majority of 2025 – the first year of the WRC’s new control tire supplied by Hankook.
Martin believes that the experience gained last year was another factor that gave the duo more confidence of completing the job this time around.
He said: “We had to learn as we were going [last year] and try to set up the car and, quite often, on some rallies we were only finding the sweet spot day two or at the end of day two and you’ve already struggled like hell on Friday. And then it’s really too much to catch up then, because your road position is again not fantastic on the second and third day. So I feel like we learned a lot in that year one with the new tire.
“I really felt that we could use that experience and use that data that we had built up through all of the year before to put it down this year.
“There were so many gravel rallies this year that we were so much faster than the year before, with the same conditions. It was like such a big difference and that was really good.
“I just think with all that, it was just like, ‘This is our year. We cannot let this one slide without a proper, proper fight.’ Or not even that, but it just felt like this was as good an opportunity as we’ve had.”
Dramatic finish only added to joyous celebrations for Toyota pair
Eventually it all boiled down to which of Evans and Oliver Solberg were fastest over the final 4.4 miles of the season. But, in Martin’s eyes, even the dramatic conclusion to the Rally Sardinia powerstage added further credence to his belief that this year’s title race was written in the stars.
“I’m not a big spiritual person, but I think some things are just laid out for you,” said the Cumbrian.
“Is that saying, you know, fall down seven times, get up eight? There’s moments in the year where, Jesus, they were the lowest of the low. But you have get up and go again and look what we’ve achieved.
“I just think the drama and the way it happened, there’s no way that that wasn’t meant to be, let’s say.”
