The final gravel rally of the season was a golden opportunity for Toyota to make hay while the figurative son shone – though in truth it was foggy for much of Rally Chile! A maximum score of 55 points on the board was impressive for Toyota, though that doesn’t mean the drivers from rival teams had failed to put in impressive drives – far from it.
Toyota
Kalle Rovanperä – 8/10
This wasn’t Rovanperä’s most impressive performance of the year, but arguably it was his most important performance of the year. There is no question that he should have made more of his road position on Friday, but he struggled to find the balance in his GR Yaris Rally1. Is that a worry? I think it might be – only because we seem to have found a chink in his armor. The type of roads that Chile presented on Friday don’t seem to suit Kalle Rovenperä. And perhaps that’s an area that he has to work on going forward.
Saturday’s stages presented a different challenge with different weather conditions. And Rovanperä revelled in those conditions. He was fast, he was precise, he was tenacious on the Friday when he had to be. And he delivered exactly what the team needed. If Toyota is to take the manufacturer’s crown this year, it will need Rovanperä at his very best. And on Saturday and Sunday in Chile, that is exactly what we saw. Not his best performance, but yes, quite possibly his most important performance this year.
Elfyn Evans – 8/10
Elfyn was very much back on form in Chile. His pace was outstanding all weekend, although he’ll be a little disappointed that he wasn’t able to match Rovanperä’s pace on Saturday. It’s a little frustrating that Evans was so quick, only because, sadly, we’ve not seen enough of this absolute top level pace from him this year go into the final two rounds of the season with a chance of winning the drivers’ title.
He fought this weekend to find his form, he fought for the team and he delivered a little bit more of that fighting spirit. A little bit more of that fighting spirit through the last two rounds of the season could well lead to another victory in the GR Yaris Rally1, which would set him up nicely for a more sustained challenge in 2025.
Sébastien Ogier – 5/10
You might wonder why I’m giving five out of 10 to a driver who made two mistakes in the opening two days that ultimately cost him the chance of winning this rally. But you really only have to look at Ogier’s performance on Sunday to see why he deserves that score. In testing conditions, he pushed that Yaris Rally1 to the limit, securing maximum manufacturer points for the team.
Ogier will be concerned about the mistakes that he is making right now. But I suspect that that is in part down to the situation the team finds itself in. Talking to other drivers that followed Ogier on the road on Saturday, his lines were about as extreme as they could be. taking every centimetre to widen the corners – which ultimately means maximum risk. And on stage eight, he did exactly that and faced the consequences for it.
Opening the corner as much as he could, not nibbling but munching away at the edge, he found a rock that ended his hopes of a strong finish – even with stopping to change a wheel on Friday, he had been making rapid inroads on the leaders. Risk and reward is a calculation drivers make really just about on every corner of every stage. I guess Ogier right now thinks the reward justifies the risk. And when you’re taking risks, as Ogier is, then ultimately you are going to make mistakes.
Those mistakes may have cost him the chance of a record-equalling ninth driver’s title, but without question the risks he took on Sunday helped Toyota to secure maximum manufacturer points over the course of the weekend. Ogier’s pace here was as quick as we’ve seen. But, ultimately, is that pace sustainable? Saturday’s mistake might suggest otherwise.
Sami Pajari – 7/10
A really mature performance from young Pajari in Chile. Yes, he had experience on these roads in the Rally2 car last year, but coming here for the first time in a Rally1 car is a completely different experience. Conditions were testing on this rally, particularly on Saturday and Sunday, and Pajari dealt with the challenge of learning that Rally1 car in exemplary fashion. He looked impressive, he sounded impressive and was confident in the interviews he gave. In only his second rally in top-level machinery, he already beginning to look and sound as if he belongs at the top.
Debuts are one thing. Consolidating, impressive debuts are one thing. Consolidating good performances is always difficult. But Pajari has proved here that he can perform impressively, consolidate and move forward. His next outing is at Central European Rally and I can’t wait to see what he can do in that Rally1 car on tarmac.
Hyundai
Ott Tänak – 8/10
In terms of the Drivers’ Championship, it is all or nothing for Ott Tänak right now. But, much like Neuville, there’s an enormous amount of responsibility on Tänak’s shoulders.
He struggled with the car, as did Neuville and Lappi. That Hyundai, at times, can be very difficult. Its window of ultimate performance opportunity is relatively narrow on gravel roads. And it seems that the roads in Chile, even though they were very different in characteristic between Friday, Saturday and Sunday, didn’t suit the Hyundai or Tänak. But again Tänak again showed character. He was there or thereabouts on the Friday and on the Saturday and Sunday he stuck to his task again.
Ultimately his pace was perhaps compromised by the need to score those manufacturer points. He leaves Chile with a slim chance still of wrestling the driver’s title from Neuville – but Tänak is a realist and knows that his job over the remaining two rounds of the season is to support Neuville is to support Hyundai in its quest to take the manufacturer’s title.
Thierry Neuville – 8/10
Neuville came into Chile with a game plan to secure points. I suspect he probably would have taken fourth or fifth place had you offered it to him before the start, and fourth is exactly what he ended up with. A strong haul of points for Neuville while one of his main title rivals, Sébastien Ogier, more or less dropped out of the battle, is a good result for him. Yes, he lost a handful of points in the driver’s race to his team-mate Ott Tänak but with two rounds remaining, Neuville looks and sounds more like the champion in waiting than I am 99% certain he is.
I sense, though, a degree of conflict in Neuville’s approach. He is, without doubt, a Hyundai man through and through. And he is desperate, not only to secure his first driver’s title, but to help Hyundai secure the manufacturer’s title. He knows that he has to be a little bit selfish to secure the driver’s title. The master of the Super Sundays so far this season was far more tentative in his Sunday drive this time around. And that was entirely understandable. But that is not Thierry Neuville. And I am absolutely certain he has a little bit of conflict going on in terms of balancing the need to be safe guard his own title ambitions with Hyundai’s need for manufacturer points.
I guess the perfect answer is for his two teammates to step up to the mark on a Sunday and take over that high risk, high reward approach – the very same one that Neuville himself has so expertly executed through the first half of this year.
Esapekka Lappi – 5/10
Lappi may have expected more from these gravel roads in Chile. We know how quick he is, we know how confident he is on gravel, but what we have learned is that the Hyundai is a difficult beast to master, particularly on the type of roads that were present in Chile.
It’s very difficult with limited seat time for Lappi to jump into the car and master the peculiarities of it, and then to be confident enough with the car to go quickly. As he said a number of times over the weekend, I am driving this car as quickly as I can drive it, I can’t do anything more.
He did what he had to do, he was very much the safety net for Hyundai this weekend, and that’s exactly what he did. He was right there on the Sunday, should any misfortune have befallen his teammates, he was there, ready to pick up the extra manufacturer points, which is what the team wanted him to do all weekend. A disappointing end, though, to what may be the last outing of Lappi’s Rally1 career, with the team asking him to retire before the final stage in a tactical ploy ahead of the remaining two rounds of the season.
If this is to be Lappi’s last outing, then he will be very much missed in the service park. HIs career had promised much, delivered much, but potentially ends with a question mark of just how far he could have gone in the WRC.
M-Sport
Adrien Fourmaux – 7/10
This was a strong performance from Fourmaux this weekend. He really is beginning to look like a driver capable of winning rallies.
An unfortunate technical issue on Friday, the alternator belt coming off which led to him nicking a cooling pipe, cost him a minute in time penalties and made it very difficult for him to ultimately achieve what he wanted to do here. But he set some very, very impressive times and looked strong and capable out in the stages.
Grégoire Munster – 7/10
Friday was perhaps Munster’s best day yet in a Rally1 car. His pace was impressive, but what was even more impressive was his consistency. He showed that when he has experience of the stages in a Rally1 car, he actually has some pace.
Is he showing enough pace to perhaps give him a chance of a second year in a Rally1 car? That is yet to be seen. But it was one of the cleanest weekends yet from Munster and, most importantly, one of the quickest. It’s good to see Munster showing what he can do but he has to continue this form through the remaining two rounds of the season if he is to have any chance at all of securing a Rally1 drive for next year.
Mārtiņš Sesks – 5/10
This was Mārtiņš’ opportunity to impress M-Sport in a very different way. There were not going to be the heroics of Poland and Latvia here – his Puma not having hybrid boost was going to have a much bigger impact here than it did on the outright fastest gravel rallies of the season. Speed was not the target – but consistency was.
M-Sport values a young driver who can show a bit of pace, yes, but also, very important, brings the thing home. That was all Sesks really had to do – learn and show some consistency in terms of pace relative to the others across the rally. Overshooting a right hander and taking two tires off the rim didn’t achieve that. It meant losing valuable running on Friday afternoon, running he needs to get further acclimatised to these Rally1 beasts.
After the high of fighting at the front in Latvia, this was a crash back down to earth for Sesks. But it was a valuable lesson in what life in the WRC can be like – you can’t always be the hero . And in fairness, once he came back on Saturday he set reasonable times considering his car’s performance handicap to the rest. He wasn’t too far off Munster at some points, who had the added bonus of hybrid power in his Puma. Without that mistake on Friday, it was a decent effort. The question is whether it’s enough for him to be back in one of these cars next year.
