“Do those pressures Scott,” Aaron Johnston shouted, just minutes before he and his driver were about to start possibly the biggest day of their World Rally Championship careers.
“It takes a lifetime.”
Scott Martin had the same plan: “Yep,” he replied, bending down to set them.
Locked in the zone, Takamoto Katsuta interrupted his flow to walk over to both Martin and Elfyn Evans and wish them the best of luck.
It was love and it was war.
Toyota vs Toyota. Winners takes all. As it turned out, that would rather literally be the case.
Evans froze out the opposition in a sensational drive that highlighted both the supreme level he’s currently operating at, and the sub-par bar the others are setting themselves.
Where did it go wrong for the champions?
The first domino to fall was Kalle Rovanperä. Even before the rally had begun, he was talking himself out of the picture.
“You shouldn’t be needing to think about your driving ever,” he observed. “It just comes how it is and now I can feel that I need to think some things during driving, which is never good, but that’s how it is and we try our best.”
The struggles of adapting his driving style to Hankook’s WRC offering were a theme of the Monte, and would only persist throughout Sweden.
Rovanperä would not be a factor in the race at the front.
Tänak was many people’s pick to reverse the tide of a rocky Monte Carlo. Harrying the leading Toyotas of Evans and Katsuta, the Estonian was firmly in the mix despite managing his tires too much on the opening afternoon.
By Saturday morning, he’d whittled his deficit to the leader down to 1.6s and was poised to pounce. But then his Hyundai generated a mysterious leak and, erring on the side of caution, the engineers turned the engine down for the remainder of the day.
To put it in Ott’s words, that was the moment “the train left the station”.
Tänak's weekend got away from him after a leak on Saturday
“We lost touch to the leaders, and basically I had to do all day just driving in safe mode through the stages,” he rued.
“That’s the way it was. Obviously I guess when you don’t know what’s happening, you want to make sure you can bring the car home.”
That he did, but in a fight against his team-mate he agonisingly missed the podium.
Neuville will be a far sight happier on the flight home from Umeå than the walk to his apartment in Monaco. It was a typically gutsy drive from Neuville who came alive when he smelt blood in the form of an Evans half spin on Saturday’s finale.
Ultimately though, he couldn’t live with the pace of the Yarises over Sunday’s three stages. And once more, his Sunday points total was just five – a far cry than the astronomical numbers he registered last year.
“I’m happy to see that we had the pace all over the weekend and we were still in contention for victory, taking off this morning,” Neuville reflected.
“Nevertheless… yeah, disappointed we weren’t able to score the big points. Struggling here and there still a little bit with basically some balance and I think maybe a bit of the tire degradation and the feeling wasn’t there yet 100%.
Neuville struggled with the balance of his i20
“Even if it improved during the weekend, things were not perfect and it seems like for Elfyn and even Taka it has been better than for us.”
Not the most soothing words for Hyundai’s engineers to hear, having wheeled out the long awaited updates for the i20 N Rally1 at the weekend.
But at least Neuville now has more points than Evans scored from round one – as does Rovanperä. Tänak meanwhile has taken two events to amass the same total as Evans did in one.Clearly all three world champions are not operating at their best quite yet, for a variety of individual reasons.
But that’s a big problem when their other big title rival has hit the ground running as hard as he has.
Consider Evans’ Sweden score alone, and he’d still be leading the world championship.
Fourmaux’s fumble
That situation is exaggerated further by the fact Monte winner Sébastien Ogier is still somehow second, but mostly because Evans’ closest rival before the start made a mess of his weekend.
Pace-wise, this was yet another example of why Adrien Fourmaux is being talked about in the same breath as the world champions of this world.
The reigning champ, and team-mate, was firmly in the rear view mirror by the time Fourmaux had completed Saturday’s second speed test.
But then it all unravelled as his helmet was undone. That bizarre mishap cost the Frenchman over 20s and dropped him out of the fight.
Driving like a man possessed, Fourmaux came out swinging in the afternoon with a stage win. But he failed to come out of the next stage at all as he became the first Rally1 driver of 2025 to be drawn in by a Swedish snowbank.
First on the road for the following day was his punishment, and from there he had “no chance” of scoring any good Sunday points. One from the powerstage was all he could muster.
“It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster I think on this rally,” Fourmaux reviewed.
Fourmaux had an eventful weekend
“Really good pace from the beginning and to be able to fight on the top with our road position, it was just mega. Really good achievement for us and really nice.
“And then on Saturday, unfortunately, with my small mistake with my helmet, it was a bit hard to accept. But then after that, we wanted to mobilize and say, OK, we stay in the fight. You never know what can happen ahead.
“And yeah, a small mistake, but big consequence. I just threw away all our effort and hope for this weekend, which is quite hard to accept.
“But you know, the positive is we have been competitive on Monte Carlo and in here. So I think it’s good for the future and with the car. So let’s get better results after that so we can catch up.”
Catch up is an appropriate phrase, because Fourmaux’s championship deficit to Evans ballooned from six to 40.
A new Evans?
Evans was imperious throughout the Rally Sweden weekend
Evans’ biggest sustained challenger throughout Rally Sweden was Katsuta, but as good as Taka clearly was Elfyn still had the measure of him at almost every turn.
Katsuta dared to take Evans’ lead from him on Saturday, closing to just 0.1s behind. The response was an immediate stage win and another time better than Katsuta to eke that back out to 2.8s.
The door was left ajar for Katsuta when Evans had that half-spin and stall on Saturday evening, halving what was a six-second rally lead down to three.
The only real mistake Evans made all weekend was on the first pass of Västervik.
“I was caught napping a bit this morning by Taka, who had an amazing event,” Evans admitted.
“But, yeah, obviously pretty relieved I managed to pull something out the bag for the penultimate stage and then hang on to it.”
Katsuta had whipped 7.5s out of Evans to steal the lead by 4.5s. Evans needed a big reply if he was to claim victory on a rally he had led almost solely throughout.
Katsuta piled the pressure on Evans, grabbing the lead on Sunday morning
And that’s exactly what he delivered with a commanding time 8.2s up on what Katsuta could manage.
The large grins etched upon his and Martin’s faces when they realized what they’d done told half the story. The other half – how on earth did they do it?
“Yeah, I mean we were pondering in service, panicking a little bit,” Evans laughed, ‘what are we going to do here?’
“The feeling I had with the front axle was probably the worst I had of the whole rally when I was in the first stage this morning. But we sort of said, ‘look, you know, we’ve not touched a spanner on this car all weekend and the conditions will evolve now’.
“And we were debating: do we change something or not? And in the end, we decided, ‘no, leave it alone’. We know what we’ve got. And I basically just had to drive it properly and that was it.”
Typically understated with his words, but there was absolutely nothing understated about his driving.
On another day Katsuta would probably have won and sent Japan into a frenzy, but Evans is operating at a level he’s not reached for years – potentially even ever.
This was as good a win as you’re ever likely to see. Controlled, calculated and confident, Evans was prepared to put it all on the line and produce.
Even the fact he felt confident enough not to change the car setup was telling, as throughout the Rally1 era the common theme has been the Welshman’s struggle to get it working in the perfect window.
Evans trusted his feeling and the setup last weekend - and that's not always been the case
“When things aren’t working I think you’re forced to change things, and there was many moments last year, especially on gravel, where I didn’t feel so comfortable,” Evans explained.
“But definitely towards the end of the year we felt more and more comfortable and I’d definitely say that when things are working, just don’t change it – leave it alone.
“And it was definitely the case that we had a decent car this weekend. Even if we knew on some stages it wasn’t perfect, we knew exactly what we had and we stuck with it, basically.”
Such was the ferocity of the battle with Katsuta, Evans ended up with all 10 Sunday points too, just to really rub salt into the wounds of his rivals.
Clearly, the challenge will be brought to Evans sooner rather than later. But no matter what his rivals throw at him, Evans looks ready to reply.
Whatever has prompted this newfound confidence and form, Evans needs to bottle it and carry on making those around him look average.
The quality of his driving now is properly punishing the world champions with their slow starts. For a driver growing far too accustomed to finishing second in the standings, what we’re seeing now is huge.
Often cast as the driver ready to collect when the chance arrives, this year’s Elfyn Evans is ready to win regardless of what’s hurled at him.
Being the consistent one hasn’t helped him win a championship yet, but being the dominant one just might.
