This was a classic Secto Rally Finland. One for the ages. Some conquered the world’s fastest rally roads, others were defeated by them. Friday morning’s rain caught several drivers out and the rally took several dramatic turns on Sunday.
Throughout all the madness some drivers shone – others faded. Looking back on Finland, this is how I felt the drivers stacked up.
Toyota
Sébastien Ogier – 8/10
This was a very impressive performance for Ogier’s first Finland in a Rally1 car, and his first Rally Finland since 2021. Perhaps not vintage Ogier, but he used all his nous, knowledge, and accumulated experience to tackle the stages and keep his car on the road, which from very early on in the rally was clearly the approach that was needed.
His first victory since 2013 on Rally Finland will surely be bittersweet. Strangely, after the rally, he said he’d rather have finished second – by which we have to assume he’d rather have finished second to his teammate Kalle Rovanperä.
Ogier drove brilliantly and controlled his performance beautifully. It was not a vintage Ogier performance – but still more than enough to win this one after Rovanperaä’s woes.
Elfyn Evans – 4/10
Friday’s performance was what we expected; Evans was there or thereabouts, keeping the pressure on Rovanperä. He found his pace and his comfort zone really rather quickly, which he needed to. But then he had no answer to Rovanperä’s pace as the reigning world champion stretched his legs on the Saturday.
He suffered a somewhat perplexing retirement on Saturday – a very odd part failure, something that Toyota, I’m pretty certain, will still be investigating. But after that, Evans very much needed the Sunday of his life, and Super Sundays really haven’t been his forte this year.
He needed to come out fighting, punching, battling. He needed to come out with a touch of the rally warrior about him. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. He put the car off the road. That could be the end of the road for Evans’ title aspirations this year.
Kalle Rovanperä – 8/10
You have to feel for Rovanperaä. He has had very little luck on this event over the past four years. You could argue that, yes, he’s crashed three out of the last four years. But this one was really an unavoidable situation. He was driving beautifully, controlling things at the front, taking no risks, and it was very much his rally to lose, which sadly is what happened on the penultimate stage.
Rovanperä’s performance up to that point shows that he has the knowledge and the ability in him to win this event. And it will come eventually. But there is a pattern emerging here with Rovanperä, and he will be looking to break that pattern sooner rather than later. He’s going to have to wait another 12 months, mind you.
Might this one play on his mind? I don’t think so, he’s not that sort of driver. But Rovanperaä’s retirement, coupled with Evans’ retirement, while a massive blow personally to both of those drivers was perhaps more so to the team.
Takamoto Katsuta – 4/10
Katsuta’s mistake on Ruuhimäki was, I suspect in some people’s eyes, unforgivable. The measure of a champion, the measure of a rally winner, is not just pace. It’s pace coupled with intelligence, and perhaps more importantly, decision making. Great champions always seem to make the right decisions. They know where to push, they know where the jeopardy is, and they know where the consequences of pushing too hard are just too great. Katsuta hasn’t managed to get on top of that yet.
He was pushing because he felt comfortable, but that spot in Ruuhimäki is well known. The tree he hit is an infamous one. And the risk versus reward calculation clearly wasn’t something that Katsuta was thinking about. The risk was quite high, the reward would have been negligible.
Katsuta is not performing well enough right now. He’s the third manufacturer point scorer for Toyota on rounds where one of Ogier and Rovanperä is not present and he is not the reliable safety net that the team needs right now. He very much needs to change something to up his game. He cannot afford to keep making these mistakes because, at some point, the team’s patience may finally run out.
Sami Pajari – 9/10
I don’t really know what’s going on with young drivers these days. It used to be impossible for young drivers to get into top-line rally cars and win stages on their debut. We’ve been delighted over the past couple of rallies firstly by Mārtiņš Sesks and now Sami Pajari. They were really different debuts, but in some ways showed different skills, different talents and a different depth of understanding of rallying.
I was really impressed with Pajari’s ability on Friday morning to put that early mistake behind him. We saw him before the opening stage and he was visibly nervous. After lots of testing in the Rally 1 car, he probably felt quite comfortable in that car until he saw the conditions. He’d never driven a Rally1 car in wet, slippery, slimy conditions and he quickly discovered just how difficult it is.
But the mark of the man was his ability to refocus. His attention changed from getting through stages by showing decent pace to just getting that car back to service. He did that, came out in the afternoon, went second-quickest on the opening stage and then won the penultimate stage of the day. It was quite a remarkable bounce back from Pajari on Friday.
He then consolidated that performance through Saturday and Sunday, finishing as the highest-placed Finn in fourth place. I won’t give him 10 because I think there’s more to come from Pajari. And it wasn’t quite the same level of competitiveness that we saw from Sesks – but take nothing away from Sami Pajari. This was an enormously impressive debut and it shows real hope for the future of Finnish rallying. He looks like the real deal to me and I really can’t wait to see him back in the top-level Rally1 car.
Hyundai
Thierry Neuville – 8/10
Neuville once again demonstrated that he is the battler and brawler of the WRC. He tenaciously gets stuck in, never gives up, and rarely lets the head drop. I say rarely because we saw some histrionics in Latvia that were perhaps masking some other issues. But here, he knew on Friday morning he had a chance – not potentially of victory, but he had the chance to capitalize when rain was falling on the stages.
Second on Rally Finland, matching his best-ever finish, is a brilliant result. His total points haul was incredible, just one less than Ogier. But in terms of the championship, was this a defining weekend? I think so. This championship, as we get to the latter part of it, is now very much Neuville’s to lose. It’s in his hands now. He can adjust his strategy and his approach in the remaining four rallies. And Neuville knows this is his best chance yet of achieving what is without any question a lifetime ambition and goal for him.
I don’t care what people say about Neuville: there is no luck involved in this sport, not over the course of a season. You make your own luck, you fight hard, you battle away, you get your head down. And Neuville has a level of skill, talent, and, more importantly, tenacity that we don’t see in other drivers.
Ott Tänak – 2/10
How do you score someone who’s crashed on the third stage of a rally? And after such a heavy crash as well. It’s difficult.
The context is that this outcome is an unmitigated disaster. His championship hopes are significantly compromised now. This is his second big crash of the year – the third if you include the deer in Poland – in four rallies.
What does that mean mentally for Tänak? Not many drivers have the capacity to bounce back from that and be absolutely on it. His saving grace is his form right now. Yes, he’s made mistakes. But I get the feeling that Tänak, in terms of his performance and ability, is almost back to his best. And that to me says that he has the chance to win all four remaining rallies. And do you know what? If he wants to be World Champion in 2024, I suspect he’s going to have to win at least three of the four remaining rallies. And he’s going to have to hope that Neuville has at least one bad rally among those four.
To me, he’s got a steeliness that we haven’t seen for a little while. And he’s got a pace and an understanding of that Hyundai that perhaps we haven’t seen in the past. The off here may not suggest that but I think he can bounce back and still be a contender in this year’s championship. He’s got four weeks until Acropolis Rally Greece to try and work out what his strategy is for the rest of the year.
Esapekka Lappi – 6/10
Lappi was really good on Friday morning, the best of the Hyundais. That in itself was deserving of plenty of praise, particularly after the difficult rally he had in Latvia. Then there was the mistake on Laukaa’s second pass. You might say: oh my goodness, look at those ruts. But he was the only one of our Rally1 cars not to negotiate those ruts successfully. So that’s a mistake, no question about that. And it could have been an enormously costly mistake for the team, with Tänak going out the day before.
The result masks how Finland could have been another very bad weekend for EP. But Lappi still showed his worth in the team with his Sunday performance, bouncing back to score a bundle of points for the manufacturers’ championship. And that’s why he’s there, to score points. It could have been a very, very difficult weekend. He could have had some difficult questions to answer. But Sunday salvaged what was looking like a tough weekend.
M-Sport
Adrien Fourmaux – 7/10
Fourmaux was good again. He’s showing the ability to finish rallies strongly. He got as much out of that car as he could this weekend. He had one or two disappointing stages. But again, he didn’t really make any mistakes out there and that’s enormously encouraging.
His fourth podium of the year moves him to within touching distance of the faltering Tänak and Evans. Fourmaux perhaps unrealistically has his sights set on challenging for the title this year, but perhaps more realistically on a second-place finish. And with the way he’s progressing, that’s not beyond him this year.
He does have to find a little bit more pace and that might well come from the car and developments that we are expecting over the next couple of rallies with the Ford Puma. But he’s still growing in confidence. Every performance he puts in, like this one in Finland, just adds to that confidence. And the encouraging thing from M-Sport fans and Fourmaux fans’ point of view is that he has so much more potential. He has so much more growing to do.
Fourmaux is nowhere near the finished product. The likes of Neuville, Evans and Tänak are all pretty much finished products. Fourmaux still growing into his role with more to come, more performance to show and potentially a first win before the end of the year.
Grégoire Munster – 3/10
Munster has gone back a step or two, sadly. He’s doing what he can; not every young driver has the ability to absolutely explode onto the scene as we’ve seen with Sesks and Pajari. Some young drivers have to grow into their roles.
Craig Breen was the absolute example of that. He grew into his role at every level that he stepped up to. He never set the world on fire, but gradually got better and better. Every single rally, Craig Breen got better and who knows how far Craig would have gone. That’s the kind of example that Munster has to look to for inspiration because he isn’t showing enormous pace.
Right now he’s not showing particularly good discipline either. He is still making mistakes, but his season is not a write-off yet. He’s got four more rallies to show us that he can demonstrate discipline. He can demonstrate a bit of rallying house and perhaps, just fractionally, if he pushes his pace on each of those rallies, perhaps he’ll be staking a claim for another year in that Rally1 car. But he needs to absolutely 100% cut out these silly little mistakes. Little mistakes like that will kill a career if they continue. If they continue without showing blinding pace, and there aren’t as yet any signs of blinding pace there, we have to see progress. Without pace, we just want to see progress. And with Munster, it’s very difficult to progress when you’re sitting in the ditch at the side of the road.
