At the end of another exciting year of World Rally Championship action, it’s time to take a look at the top 10 best performing drivers of 2023.
However, just how well a driver really performed over the course of a year isn’t an objective matter. It’s one that can be interpreted in many different ways, and everyone will have their own opinion.
Happily, here at DirtFish there’s one man who is never afraid to give his opinion and who gives us his ratings for each driver’s performance on every WRC event: Mr Colin Clark!
So, we’ve decided to add together all of his ratings for 2023, and see which drivers made Colin’s top 10 list of WRC drivers for last year.
There are a few surprises here, with most drivers not occupying the same spot in this ranking as they did in the final WRC standings. One notable driver who misses out on this top 10 list is the late Craig Breen, who sadly only accumulated one score from Colin this year.
That score? 10/10 for his outstanding drive to a second place finish on Rally Sweden.
So without further ado, here are the 10 best WRC drivers of 2023, as measured by the Voice of Rally’s driver rankings from this year:
10. Teemu Suninen
Championship position: 9th
Wins: 0
Podiums: 0
Teemu Suninen returned to the WRC’s top class this season after Breen’s untimely passing, and performed admirably in the circumstances.
After not competing at that level for nearly two years, Suninen delivered a solid fifth place finish on his Rally1 debut in Estonia, and followed that up with more solid points in an impressive run to fourth on Rally Finland.
Those performances pleased Hyundai team boss Cyril Abiteboul, and he was even more pleased when Suninen was running as high as second on the final day of his next start for the team in Chile.
However, a mistake at the worst possible moment cost him what looked like a certain podium there, and a sixth place in his final start for the team on Central European Rally meant the Finn lost much of the momentum he had gained.
He would ultimately miss out on a Hyundai drive for 2024, with the team confirming Andreas Mikkelsen as the final driver in its Rally1 roster earlier this month.
9. Dani Sordo
Championship position: 8th
Wins: 0
Podiums: 2
The likable and experienced Dani Sordo completed his sixth season as a part-time driver for Hyundai in 2023, and again rewarded the Korean brand’s faith in him by delivering plenty of points and two trophies.
The Spaniard’s season highlight came in Portugal, where he followed world champion Kalle Rovanperä home to claim a second place finish, while he only just missed out on achieving the same result in Greece – pushing Toyota’s Elfyn Evans all the way to the finish but ultimately having to settle for third, 4.2s down on the Welshman.
Those results show that the Hyundai driver can still mix it with the WRC’s best, but Sordo’s season would end on a much more disappointing note, as he retired from Rally Japan on the first full day of competition for the second consecutive year on the very same stage.
But despite that sad end to the year, Sordo can look forward to a Hyundai return once again in 2024.
8. Pierre-Louis Loubet
Championship position: 11th
Wins: 0
Podiums: 0
Pierre-Loubet had somewhat of a season to forget.
After winning his first WRC stage and securing some solid finishes in a part-season campaign for M-Sport in 2022, the young Frenchman never really looked comfortable in his Puma Rally1 this year.
Numerous crashes, including a frightening high-speed off on Rally Chile, and technical gremlins with his car ultimately meant he would finish below the top Rally2 competitors in the overall points standings.
While Loubet can’t be blamed for the problems with his M-Sport machinery, the team did ultimately decide to replace him with countryman Adrien Fourmaux for the season-ending Rally Japan.
Sixth-place finishes in both Sweden and Estonia were the French driver’s best results of 2023, and it appears he will move on to pastures new for next season.
7. Sébastien Ogier
Championship position: 5th
Wins: 3
Podiums: 4
Three wins, the same as his world champion team-mate Kalle Rovanperä, in just a part-time season was some accomplishment for Sébastien Ogier, and it’s even more impressive to think he could easily have had more victories had luck gone a little more his way in Greece and Sardinia.
But then again, Ogier had the significant benefit of superior road position for his wins in both México and Kenya, and had the advantage of being Sébastien Ogier in securing yet another Rally Monte Carlo victory!
So is winning three times with those advantages really so impressive? Was 2023 actually just an average season for Ogier?
Either way, the numbers don’t lie, and the eight-time champion would surely still be entirely capable of challenging for a ninth world title if he ever felt the need to get involved in another championship tussle.
6. Esapekka Lappi
Championship position: 6th
Wins: 0
Podiums: 4
As Esapekka Lappi said himself after the WRC season finale in Japan: 2023 was a season of three parts for him.
The start consisted of learning his new car and getting comfortable with his new Hyundai team.
The middle part was good – he took four podiums and looked like a driver on the verge of winning rallies, especially after a strong performance on Rally Italy Sardinia where he finished second to, and looked capable of beating, Hyundai’s number one driver Thierry Neuville.
But then came the end of the season, and boy that was bad. Three huge crashes in Finland, Chile and Central Europe marred his campaign, and Lappi’s demeanor had become almost that of a broken man by the time his year was over.
He’ll hope that a part-time campaign and more time to enjoy life at home will help achieve better results in 2024.
5. Takamoto Katsuta
Championship position: 7th
Wins: 0
Podiums: 1
If 2023 was a season of three parts for Lappi, then it was one of two halves for Takamoto Katsuta.
The start was not great, and the season’s halfway point on Safari Rally Kenya marked the first time Katsuta had even cracked the top five all year, finishing fourth on that event to round off a Toyota 1-2-3-4 and finally put some much needed points on the board.
As the season progressed however, things started to improve. The Japanese driver brought his GR Yaris Rally1 to the finish on every round, picked up a well-earned podium in Finland, and then ended the year by having by far the most impressive showing of his WRC career to date, winning 10 stages and showing consistent rally-winning pace in Japan.
Had it not been for a crash in the torrential rain of SS2, he may well have won that event, but even so Katsuta turned the narrative of his season around. Now, we all can’t wait to see what he can deliver in 2024.
4. Ott Tänak
Championship position: 4th
Wins: 2
Podiums: 4
What could have been a fairytale return to the team that launched his career turned into a bit of a nightmare for Ott Tänak in 2023.
That said, two wins still isn’t a bad return from a season in which he struggled with a car that was never really to his liking and an M-Sport team with which he grew increasingly frustrated.
In that light, his victories in Sweden and Chile look even more impressive, and on those events Tänak showed all the raw speed and rallycraft that put him on top of the rallying world just a few years ago.
But on many other occasions in 2023, the 2019 world champion appeared to be just dragging his Puma Rally1 through to the end of the event, beset with technical troubles or just lacking the pace to challenge Toyota and Hyundai.
In the end, Tänak decided enough was enough, and the Estonian will return to Hyundai for 2024 in his continued search for a second world title.
3. Elfyn Evans
Championship position: 2nd
Wins: 3
Podiums: 7
As arguably 2023’s most improved driver, there’s no doubt that Elfyn Evans had a very strong campaign.
After a winless 2022 and struggling to adapt to his new GR Yaris Rally1, Evans felt more and more comfortable with his machinery this term. The result was three victories, and a title challenge that almost went right down to the wire before the Welshman slipped off the road and into an unfortunately placed barn on the season’s penultimate round in Central Europe.
The memory of that defeat didn’t last long, however, as Evans put up perhaps his best ever performance just a few weeks later when he dominated Rally Japan in simply appalling road conditions to head a podium lockout for Toyota at home.
Evans will lead that Toyota team next year after the news of Kalle Rovanperä’s partial campaign, and his speed and consistency in 2023 show he’s more than ready for that challenge.
2. Thierry Neuville
Championship position: 3rd
Wins: 2
Podiums: 8
Thierry Neuville’s 2023 season may look on paper like a disappointment, but the Belgian will still have plenty of positives he can take from it.
Yes, mistakes in Croatia and Japan cost him dearly, and car failures in Portugal, Greece and Kenya (where was also later disqualified for a recce regulations breach) show that his Hyundai machinery still isn’t as reliable as the near-bulletproof Toyotas.
Apart from those events, Neuville scored a podium on every other rally in 2023. In fact, his podium tally at eight is the same as world champion Kalle Rovanperä’s.
While his two wins on Rally Italy Sardinia and Central European Rally may not have eclipsed his victory tally from a difficult 2022, there’s certainly reason to believe that he and his Hyundai team has made genuine progress this year.
It will be fascinating to see how the squad, with a strong team principal in Cyril Abiteboul, new technical director François-Xavier Demaison, and star drivers Neuville and Ott Tänak, fares in 2024.
1. Kalle Rovanperä
Championship position: 1st
Wins: 3
Podiums: 8
What can be said about the 23-year-old double world champion’s year that hasn’t already been said?
As Colin’s ranking suggests, the Finn was simply the best driver in the WRC this season. A steady start, with just one podium in the opening four rounds, had some people around the service park raising their eyebrows.
But Rovanperä was still putting strong points on the board, and then began a title charge with his win in Portugal that never seriously looked like being stopped, although team-mate Elfyn Evans came far closer to doing so this year than anyone did in 2022.
With only one rally-ending mistake all season, coming at his home event in Finland, Rovanperä also proved himself the most consistent and measured driver in the WRC, a remarkable feat considering the considerable level of experience his rivals possess.
The champion steps back to a part-time campaign in 2024. Whether or not that means we’ll be talking about him any less next season only time will tell.
