All five Toyota drivers have now won World Rally Championship events this season – matching Fiat’s record from 1977.
As a result, all five Toyota drivers are in the fight to win the championship ahead of Rally Finland: round 10 of 14.
Elfyn Evans leads the race on 177 points, 25 points up on Takamoto Katsuta with Sami Pajari third, 33 points adrift. Sébastien Ogier and Oliver Solberg are 38 and 47 points adrift respectively.
While Evans has led the standings after seven of the nine rounds so far and appears to have a solid advantage, the road cleaning effect on gravel is known to punish the first car on the road, which Evans will be for Rally Finland and likely Rally Paraguay afterwards at the very minimum.
That’s why he’s repeatedly poured cold water over any championship talk, as nobody knows how things will play out with no more Tarmac rounds remaining to offer the series leader any road sweeping reprieve.
“I think the reality is that we’re going to see everybody bunch up over the next rounds and it’s probably going to be quite a tight finish to the year, I’m guessing,” Evans told DirtFish.
Evans reckons the title race will go down to the wire
“But conditions will depend a lot and of course what happens over the next rounds will depend. So there’s not really much point speculating too much. Just get the head down and do what we can.”
Should the title fight go down to the final round, it would be the fifth time this decade that has been the case.
Evans’ immediate focus, however, is on maximizing Rally Finland – an event he’s won twice in 2021 and 2023.
“Conditions will always determine whether you can fight or not from first to the road obviously, but the target is always, if the conditions are with you, to try and fight for a win,” he said.
“Let’s wait and see how it is. We have to treat it like another rally and do the best we can.”
One week after Finland, Evans and co-driver Scott Martin will travel to Scotland for the Grampian Forest Rally – Rally Scotland’s candidate event ahead of its expected inclusion in the 2027 WRC calendar.
DirtFish understands Evans will drive the stages in a Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 but not competitively – similar to what Ott Tänak did at Rally di Roma Capitale earlier this month.
