Rally Italy Sardinia was arguably the most dramatic of the year so far. A 0.2-second winning margin for Ott Tänak and a crash for the championship leader Thierry Neuville were just some of the big moments as Sardinia delivered drama by the bucketload.

There were plenty of drivers who impressed, and some that urgently need to improve.

Hyundai

Ott Tänak 9/10

A fully deserved win for Ott Tänak. He wasn’t gifted this win by Ogier’s misfortunes. Tänak very much drove his way to victory. Ogier was beaten on the first two stages on Sunday morning. Tänak took 11s there, and that is what gave him the opportunity to win this event.

Yes, he said to us at the regroup in the middle of the morning that he wasn’t interested in winning. But the emotions on the podium, the emotions when he realized that he’d won the event, told a very different story. This meant a heck of a lot to Tänak.

What it does mean is that Tänak is now in the ascendancy in terms of the title race. It was a terrible start to the year, but he seems to be finding that inner strength, that battling tenacity that we know he’s got. It’s allowing him to stay in touch, certainly with Thierry Neuville, and to catch him. And who knows? He will probably quite shortly pass Elfyn Evans in the title race.

Tänak is looking once again like a proper title contender. We’re not even at the halfway point, and he is beginning to fire on all cylinders. We’ve got a heck of an interesting title battle in front of us for the second part of the year.

Thierry Neuville 6/10

Yes, he made a mistake on Saturday, and perhaps you’d argue that he doesn’t deserve the six out of 10, but Neuville’s form on Friday, first on the road, once again, was tremendous.

He’s showing that he’s got that ability that Sébastien Ogier demonstrated so well through so many years of victories where he just found a way of dealing with being first on the road that kept him very much in the fight. Neuville has once again demonstrated that here. The pace was remarkable on Friday.

Saturday was a different matter, and I’m struggling with myself here. Should he get six out of 10? Should we give him five out of 10? I think he deserves a six. He drove brilliantly through the opening three stages.

He passed two drivers. He moved up to third after the first stage. He consolidated that in the second stage of the morning. In the third stage of the morning, he built a good lead. He really was beyond the reaches of Dani Sordo and Takamoto Katsuta.

That was the time then to reassess. He’d been taking risks. He’d been pushing hard. He’d been driving as we know he can; battling his way through the stages, fighting his way to stage wins, fighting his way past his rivals. But he’d done all the hard work.

There was no need for him to continue pushing. He was not in a month of Sundays going to catch the two boys in front of him who were more than a minute up the road. And he got it wrong. He continued to push. He lost concentration. He made a mistake, and it potentially cost him dearly in this year’s title race.

But Neuville came back on Sunday with renewed focus. Once again, first on the road, don’t forget, but he took 12 points on Sunday. Seven points for being the fastest over the four stages and then five points in that powerstage push.

Days like Sunday are the kind of days that will win Thierry Neuville the drivers’ title this year. You have to be able to dig deep. You have to be able to show tenacity. You have to be able to show mental strength, and you have to be able to show outright speed and determination.

And Neuville did all of that to rescue what could easily have been a disastrous weekend.

Dani Sordo 7/10

What more can we say about Dani Sordo? He is the absolute ultimate team player.

Yet another podium to add to his very, very long list of podiums throughout his career. He knew early on in the event that his pace was not going to allow him to push anywhere near the top of the time sheets. So, what did he do? He used his brain. He used his intelligence. He used his enormous bank of experience, particularly of this event.

Don’t forget, two of his victories have been here in Sardinia. He used all of that knowledge, that ability, that experience to stay on the roads, to make no mistakes, and to do exactly what the team required, which was to score points for the team – not just to act as a safety net, but to finish on the podium.

It was a remarkably strong, composed drive from Sordo. Rumors are this may be his last outing in the WRC. I’d hate to think that because, yes, a podium would be a fitting way for him to go, but there was no fanfare. Dani Sordo, 20 years in the WRC, deserves a heck of a better send-off than he got on the island of Sardinia.

He only had two events guaranteed this year for Hyundai, but I can easily see a situation where Hyundai will need the solidity of Sordo before the end of the year. I don’t think this is his last event this year, and I really hope we see him back.

Toyota

Sébastien Ogier 8/10

Sébastien Ogier, his third event in a row, looking for three wins in a row, and it looked pretty much nailed on right until the final stage of the rally.

He did what we know he can do. He perhaps didn’t capitalize enough on his road position on Friday but it wasn’t down to him. He had sensor issues which didn’t allow him to put in the committed drive that we knew he was looking to achieve on Friday afternoon.

Those were the critical stages, the first-pass stages on Friday, and he knew he had to build the lead there. Yes, he led at the end of the day, but it perhaps wasn’t the lead he needed. He drove well, though, on Saturday. He drove as well as we would expect him to and he continued to build his lead steadily over Ott Tänak.

He didn’t really make any mistakes at all. He was hampered on Saturday by a puncture, but he kept things together. He kept it nice and neat and tidy. And when Tänak started to drop back a little on Saturday afternoon, Ogier was there to build what we thought was a good enough lead: 17.1s going into the final four stages, 39km, on Sunday.

But it turned out it wasn’t enough. It’s happened before on these stages where he has lost a final-day battle to Thierry Neuville a few years ago.

What happened out there to Ogier? You can argue that the puncture on the final stage cost him, but what cost him more dearly was those 11s that he lost to Tänak on Sunday’s opening two stages. That really is where he lost this one. Had he not been so far off the pace on those two stages, he could have coped in that short final stage with the puncture and still probably would have gone on to win the rally. But he gave away too much time.

He gave Tänak too much of an opportunity. Tänak might have been playing a little bit of mind games with Ogier, saying he wasn’t interested in the win, but he sniffed victory. There was a sense of something potentially happening in the air, and Ogier gave Tänak that opportunity through the first two stages of the morning. That is where the rally, in my opinion, was lost for Sébastien Ogier.

He was good once again. In fact, he was great. And he carried the team once again – the only Toyota driver who was remotely capable of battling for a win here. That’s the worrying thing for Toyota, who will require his services perhaps more than ever. Yes, they’ve got him in Poland. How much more will they be able to call on it on him before the end of the year? We’ll have to wait and see.

Elfyn Evans 4/10

Dear, oh dear. I don’t know where to start with Elfyn Evans. It is verging on, in my opinion, a crisis – perhaps a crisis of confidence in his ability to get it right in that car.

Now we’re talking about the next three rallies being critical. They are absolutely super-critical for Evans. We’ve got fast gravel coming up in Poland, in Latvia and in Finland. If he doesn’t turn things around there, he can write off his championship chances this year.

He looked lost at times out there this weekend. He was only quicker through the majority of Saturday than the rookie, Grégoire Munster, and that’s not good enough for a lead driver. It’s not good enough for a man who has aspirations to lift the drivers’ title this year, and it’s not good enough by Evans’ own standards.

Jari-Matti Latvala simplified it, and said Evans has just got to enjoy his driving more. He’s thinking too much about the championship. I’m really not sure that’s right. There was more to this than that. It is not a simple fix for Evans. He’s been battling this car now for the past two-and-a-half seasons; battling himself, battling the car, battling the regulations, and it’s not coming together for him.

Yes, you can argue that Evans has scored good points here for his tenacity, for his doggedness, for his ability to accept situations and drive at a pace that is safe and will reward him with points. Yes, he’s joint second in the championship, but his form is far from the kind of form we would expect; a long, long way away from what we would expect.

Evans knows himself it has to turn around, and it has to turn around quickly.

Takamoto Katsuta 4/10

I’ve got to give Takamoto Katsuta a four as well. You have to contextualize these things, don’t you? With Elfyn Evans, we expect. He’s been right there on the cusp of winning championships; final rally showdowns a couple of times to win championships. Evans is a rally winner, that is why we give him focus. We don’t expect that pace from a rally winner.

Katsuta is a different matter. He’s still finding his way in the sport. You might argue he’s had plenty of time to find his way. But some people, it just takes a little longer to find the direction that they want to go in and how they’re going to get to their final destination. Katsuta is work in progress still, so we have to look at his performance in a slightly different way.

He was hampered, clearly. He was stopped on Saturday by the issue with the gearbox, and that was disappointing. Before that, he’d struggled, but he was sitting reasonably comfortably in third place before the car stopped.

Katsuta’s real strength now is his ability to put disappointments behind him and not linger and not go back; not revert to a pace which is almost painfully slow. He puts disappointments behind him almost instantly and moves on at the same pace, the stage-winning pace, this podium sitting pace that we’ve seen he’s got.

It is potentially rally-winning pace if you look back to Japan last year, Sweden this year. He’s got that rally-winning pace. It doesn’t take him rally after rally to build back to that after disappointments. And that’s kind of what we saw a little bit of here, and what I really expect to see when we go to Poland in a few weeks’ time.

M-Sport

Adrien Fourmaux 6/10

I like the cut of this guy’s cloth, I really do. He didn’t have a fantastic start to the rally, quite clearly. He had issues on Friday afternoon. But he showed glimpses of pace, showed that he’s still improving.

That M-Sport car has been really solid this year, and it was a surprise just how fragile it looked at times out there this weekend. Lots of problems for Fourmaux: technical problems, reliability problems that let him down. Fourmaux was looking to consolidate his fourth position, maybe get himself back into that battle for third position in the championship, and it didn’t happen for him, because he wasn’t allowed to fight. The car just wasn’t, unfortunately, as strong as he’d hoped it would be.

These things do happen. We know that. The car has been far more faultless this year and that’s been really important. That’s what’s allowed him to build this confidence, build the pace, build the swagger that we’ve seen in Fourmaux on the stages this year. But it was disappointing this weekend that he wasn’t able to build on what we’ve seen so far. It will return, I’m sure.

Fourmaux is one that likes the high-speed stuff, and we know the M-Sport car is very capable on the smooth, fast, high-speed gravel. Fourmaux will bounce back, I’m sure, in Poland.

Grégoire Munster 6/10

He might have been a long, long way off the pace, but there were one or two glimpses out there this weekend with one or two really encouraging splits, one or two really encouraging stage times.

Munster did what he absolutely 100% had to do. He had a game plan. Stick to that game plan. Get through the stages. Don’t worry about the times. And that’s the first time he’s done it this year without any real major issues or incidents.

It wasn’t about times this weekend. Or if it was about times, it certainly wasn’t about results. But the bonus and the reward for a steady, solid, disciplined drive from Munster was his best finish in the championship.

He finished fifth, and that will give him an enormous amount of confidence going forward. He needs to keep himself out of the ditches. He needs to make sure he finishes every stage, every kilometer. That is the way you learn: seat time. It’s where it’s at for youngsters these days. He’s got a golden opportunity this year, and he absolutely has to make the most of it. And, as I said, when we looked at his performance in Portugal, you learn nothing sitting in ditches watching your opponents drive by.

That is not what Munster did this weekend. He kept it on the road and had a strong weekend. Let’s see where he can go from here.