Elfyn Evans secured his seventh World Rally Championship win, and second of 2023, with the fastest time on Rally Finland’s powerstage.
The Toyota driver had led the rally since SS8 on Friday, when team-mate Kalle Rovanperä rolled out, and on Saturday he went on a run of seven stage wins to build a lead of over half a minute over Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville.
Sunday morning was similar, with Evans winning two stages out of three to grow his lead to 38.2s, and going into the powerstage he knew that getting the five points for being fastest would get him within 25 points of championship leader Rovanperä.
By driving on the very edge of the limit he managed to do it, going through the second pass of Himos – Jämsä 0.9s faster than Neuville who also scored an important haul of points to sit 36 off the top.
While Evans’ win was all but secured before the day had even begun, there was a big battle for third place between Toyota’s Takamoto Katsuta and Hyundai’s Teemu Suninen.
Katsuta started Sunday with an advantage of 6.4s, and that had only decreased by a tenth of a second by the time he reached the powerstage. He went through two seconds slower than Suninen, meaning he secured his fourth WRC podium by 4.3s.
Suninen, on only his second outing in a Rally1 car this year, claimed his best result since Rally Mexico in 2020 when he finished third.
Jari-Matti Latvala, who is usually acting as Toyota’s team principal rather than one of its drivers, marked his return to the cockpit in the WRC with a fifth place finish and his first points since 2019 Rally Spain.
“It’s been amazing fun,” he beamed after finishing the powerstage and thanking Toyota for the opportunity to drive on his home event. “Really perfect run [in that stage], no mistakes.”
Hänninen, who himself is an accomplished driver and now tests for Toyota to help their car development, became one of very few people to score WRC points as both a driver and a co-driver.
The battle for Rally2 honors was also for sixth overall, and that was won by Oliver Solberg.
Solberg was not entered for WRC2 points in his Škoda Fabia RS Rally2, so his class victory counted for nothing. But he did score WRC points with the fifth top-six finish of his career.
His reaction? “It was a bit of a f*** up to not score points, definitely!”
Winning WRC2 for the first time in seventh was Sami Pajari, also in a Škoda.
“It’s a really, really nice feeling,” he said following victory. “It seems to be now every rally I need to say thank you to everyone [after winning].”
Adrien Fourmaux, Nikolay Gryazin and Andreas Mikkelsen rounded out the overall top 10 and Rally2 top five, with Gryazin matching Solberg for the fastest powerstage time in class.
