Despite winning Secto Rally Finland for the sixth time in seven years, there were long faces in Toyota’s corner of the Jyväskylä service park.
Even winner Sébastien Ogier struggled to find much joy in his second Finland triumph in 11 years.
The exit of World Rally Championship title challenger, and then rally leader Kalle Rovanperä, hung a large cloud over Toyota’s result and inflicted major damage on it in the manufacturers’ title hunt.
On a weekend that Toyota looked set to overhaul Hyundai for the lead, it instead saw its deficit swell from one to 20 points.
Here’s how the fastest car in Finland lost out, despite its rival also losing two cars to crashes over the weekend.
Hyundai’s initial disaster
Given all of the drama that later unfolded, it’s easy to forget just how brutal a day Friday was for Hyundai.
Ott Tänak’s exit from SS3 was a massive surprise and a huge blow both to his own title aspirations but also to those of his team.
Esapekka Lappi was at least still in play, but he only lasted three more stages when, in a rutted section, he collected a tree and dropped out of contention too.
Toyota lost Takamoto Katsuta in a similar fashion to how Hyundai lost Lappi, but that didn’t really soften the blow with Toyota locking out the entire podium overnight, and Hyundai flying solo with Thierry Neuville in fourth.
And worse still – Tänak was out for the entire weekend, meaning any more slip-ups from Neuville or the returning Lappi and Hyundai would sacrifice a chunk of points.
“Very disappointed, as a team we lost two cars in those circumstances. Disappointing for everybody,” Neuville said.
Christian Loriaux’s words were perhaps the most prophetic though. He must have known something the rest of us didn’t.
“The biggest hit is probably for the manufacturers championship, but OK, tomorrow EP will be back on the road, maybe we can get back a bit of points for the manufacturer with EP,” he told DirtFish.
“And hopefully we carry on with Thierry. It still is a long rally.”
Toyota’s rally crumbles
The first Toyota domino to fall was Elfyn Evans, who lost a front driveshaft on Saturday’s second stage and leaked six minutes stroking his car back to service – where he lost another 2m40s due to leaving late.
He was out of play, which was an obvious opportunity for Neuville in the drivers’ battle; particularly as his other big rival Tänak was on to score zero too.
But from a Hyundai perspective, Kalle Rovanperä still comfortably led with Ogier in second, so Toyota was poised to rake in big points.
Then Sunday happened.
Ogier got the car to the end as the eventual winner as an unlucky Rovanperä found a rock in the line which sent him off into oblivion and out of the rally. Evans crashed on the very same stage, ending his chase for Super Sunday points and, in turn, giving Neuville and Hyundai the chance to score more.
Why Toyota’s crashes hurt it more
The Super Sunday points are key to the major swing in the manufacturers’ race. For the first time, the bigger consequences of retiring on a Sunday were really felt in Finland.
Retiring on the final day has always been the worst time to do so, as there is no opportunity to return under super-rally and salvage anything. Hyundai experienced this last year in Rally Chile when Teemu Suninen crashed two stages from home, following Lappi who’d already wrecked the car on day one and hadn’t been able to restart.
But with the new points system, two key factors make Sunday’s events so costly for Toyota: the inability to collect Super Sunday points, and the loss of Saturday’s points too.
Before Evans and Rovanperä went off, they were first and second in the Super Sunday standings. There was still the powerstage to come and to factor in, but Toyota was on for a maximum of 13 with Hyundai sitting on just six (Lappi was fourth, Neuville sixth). In the end, Lappi grabbed first and Neuville took fourth giving Hyundai 11, while Toyota only got six with Ogier.
Hyundai then bagged seven powerstage points with Toyota securing just one, so that’s 11 of the 19 points dropped.
But the most painful ones to lose were undoubtedly Rovanperä’s from Saturday. To claim Saturday points, a driver must also complete Sunday and because he crashed, his 18 points were lost and everyone else inherited them. Ogier admittedly did get those 18, but Neuville got extra, as did Lappi, and with Evans already outside of the points and Takamoto Katsuta not nominated, Toyota again only scored points with one car.
It was an utter sucker-punch for Toyota, which had to deal with both losing a leading car so late on in the rally, and then the harsher ramifications of that happening on Sunday rather than earlier in the weekend.
Ogier’s frustration
Ogier has long made his feelings clear that he is not a fan of the new-for-2024 points system.
In Finland, his victory was essentially meaningless as on its own it didn’t yield him, or Toyota, any extra championship points.
“We are winning the rally and we are losing massive points on the constructors, on the manufacturers. How can people understand that?” Ogier told DirtFish.
“The system cannot be more wrong than it is with the points. It’s so unrewarding, it’s so… Not meaning much for me.
“And again, this thing doesn’t push me to drive more into the season because, yeah, of course I want to help my team, but it’s frustrating to see that whatever you achieve, yeah, some points are given at the end of the weekend, but nobody understands the reason why.”
Ogier would like to see a return to how things used to be.
“For me, I’ve said it. You have to go back to the old points system, which was great. The idea of having Super Sunday is also a good idea. It brought a lot of attention and intensity in the race on Sunday, but in the right balance.
“The old points system with a win 25-18, where you have a real gap for the win, and then only top five points on the Sunday will be enough in my eyes and powerstage maybe only top three and that’s it.
“Then you have something which makes sense, rewarding for the winners and having the intensity of the Sunday that we got this year.”
Hyundai’s surprise
Considering Lappi struggled and Neuville made it clear he felt Finland was the first rally Hyundai was missing performance, to outscore Toyota so heavily was totally unexpected.
“We have seen throughout the whole weekend a lot of ups and downs,” Neuville told DirtFish.
“We have had a rollercoaster of emotions all weekend, such as the stages have been rollercoaster all weekend. It was very challenging for us.
“I felt the pressure very early in the race because my two team-mates went off the road and we were asked to keep the car on the road and take a clever approach, which was our goal from the beginning, when we felt especially that… yeah, the Toyota was just a little bit faster this weekend and we couldn’t follow up without taking big risks.
“That’s what we did, but then lots of turnarounds again today.”
Positive ones for Hyundai though, and particularly Neuville whose own title lead has doubled from 13 to 27 points.
“Yeah, probably. I mean, there could be a glass of champagne to kick off the holidays for sure,” he smiled.
What Rally Finland’s trajectory ultimately reinforces is, in rallying, even with the fastest car, nothing is ever guaranteed.
But it’s really quite bizarre that all of this Toyota pain came from what, conventionally, would have been a moment of great gain.
