Every rally driver craves that winning feeling. For the professionals, it’s why they take such big risks behind the wheel – the elation of victory is an emotion worth putting it all on the line for.
Some drivers get to experience it regularly: if your name is Sébastien and you hail from France, you’ll be well acquainted with that feeling in the World Rally Championship.
But not everyone is so lucky. It’s one thing to throw all you’ve got and fall short, not knowing what it’s like. It’s possibly even worse to have managed it once and then struggle to make it happen again.
After a very long wait, Esapekka Lappi finally made it happen again on Rally Sweden. But he’s not the only one to have tried, failed, tried again, failed again, and still pressed on anyway until the sweet relief of victory number two finally came along.
Thanks to the incredible depth of statistics on eWRC-results, we’ve been able to collate the longest periods WRC drivers have had to wait before sipping winners’ champagne for a second time.
Stig Blomqvist
3 years, 11 months, 26 days
Blomqvist recorded four second places between his first two WRC wins
Most wins, most podiums, most stage wins, most time spent in the lead of the rally. Stig Blomqvist owns all these records on Rally Sweden. And yet, it’s that rally that gets him onto this list in the first place.
Blomqvist was already the master of Sweden by 1973. He’d won the previous two editions, taking two consecutive wins when it was part of the International Championship for Makes. He made it three in a row when the World Rally Championship was formalized, defeating Saab team-mate Per Eklund by two-and-a-bit minutes.
It took until the same event in the 1976 season for him to stand on the top step of a WRC podium once more. There were two reasons why: a part-time approach to the WRC and several near-misses when he did show up.
Blmoqvist’s rallying calendar in the mid-1970s was a mix of WRC, ERC and Swedish domestic events. Each year he’d take on the same three WRC events: Sweden, Rally of 1000 Lakes and the RAC Rally.
Finland in 1974 aside, he would score second place in every rally he managed to finish. And most of the time, he’d been fastest throughout, but with one stage going awry – take Myherin out of the 1974 RAC and he wins by a country mile.
But, finally, on the 1977 edition of Rally Sweden, the stars aligned for Stig again and a wait of almost four years was over.
Henri Toivonen
5 years, 9 days
Toivonen's first two wins came in very different cars - but both were on the RAC
There’s a parallel to Blomqvist’s wait for win number two with Henri Toivonen. In the end, his savior was the rally he found the most success on throughout his career – but in Toivonen’s case, that was not his home round of the WRC. It was Great Britain.
His first WRC win demonstrated the talent that would take him to the cusp of glory. Aboard a Talbot Sunbeam Lotus, Toivonen spent the first few stages getting up to speed, then hit the gas hard when the crews moved north towards the Pennines.
Per Eklund fell by the wayside with a broken oil pump; third place. Björn Waldegård’s Toyota Celica ground to a halt on Grizedale South; second place. Anders Kulläng dropped 17 minutes in Grizedale North: the lead. And Hannu Mikkola’s Ford Escort simply couldn’t keep up with Toivonen’s searing pace.
At 24, he became the youngest winner in WRC history; it would take another 28 years before his record was broken. It meant time would be on his side to chase after win number two.
There were more podiums with Talbot but no further wins. A two-year stint with Opel failed to deliver much better, though there was still another RAC podium scored. It was a switch to Lancia that finally brought Toivonen to the cusp of rallying greatness.
His 1984 season in the European championship with Porsche in a 911, scoring three wins there while also taking on selected WRC events with a Lancia 037, was a clear sign that there was more to come from Toivonen. The RAC in 1985 was where it all finally came good again at the top level, debuting the Delta S4.
It looked like the floodgates were about to open on a Toivonen era in the WRC when he won the season-opening 1986 Monte Carlo Rally. Sadly, there were no more RACs for Toivonen, his life tragically cut short by his Corsica crash.
Dani Sordo
5 years, 9 months, 22 days
Sordo flew to victory on Sardinia in 2019, and would do so again a year later
It took almost eight years at the top level for Dani Sordo to score his first WRC win. At one point he was the most successful WRC driver without a win to their name.
That wait finally came to an end on Rally Germany 2013. There were years he’d push his esteemed Citroën team-mate Sébastien Loeb very, very close in the Germany’s wine region.
Sordo’s first win was a nail-biter too: it all came down to a final showdown where one of two drivers was going to take their first WRC victory. It was either Sordo or Thierry Neuville. The latter’s young years probably contributed to him blinking first, while Sordo’s experience helped steady the nerves and deliver victory.
It took a long time for the second victory to happen too. Sordo had carved out a career as a bulletproof choice to guarantee a strong haul of manufacturers’ points. And driving towards the Sardinian coastline in 2019, he looked set to bank another trademark podium finish, to the delight of Hyundai.
Instead, he was shocked to learn at the Sassari finish line that’d he won. The power-steering on Ott Tänak’s Toyota had failed on the final stage and victory was suddenly thrust upon Sordo, completely out of the blue.
Reliability, rather than pure speed, had delivered the second win. But that hardly detracts from the achievement: it was a classic Sordo win and richly deserved given his contribution to Hyundai over the years. There would be a second win in the same place a year later.
Shekhar Mehta
5 years, 11 months, 24 days
Mehta and the Datsun 160J were a successful combination for several years
Like Blomqvist in Sweden, Shekhar Mehta is an all-time record holder on his home WRC round, scoring the most Safari Rally wins (tied with Carl Tundo).
Mehta was revered not only for his local knowledge of East African roads but his skill on rough gravel events; during his career he was handed the keys to factory cars by Lancia, Opel, Audi and Peugeot. But it was with Datsun that Mehta carved out his legend.
Alongside Joginder Singh and Vic Preston, he proved to be a constant thorn in the side of WRC regulars hoping to visit East Africa and come away with a victory.
Reliably winning any rally year after year was a tough enough ask in the 1970s, given the car-breaking test of endurance that the average WRC event represented back then. But making that happen on the Safari, of all events, was an even tougher ask, even for a driver of Mehta’s calibre.
He won the first-ever WRC Safari in 1973. An 11th place followed in 1974 when he switched to a Lancia Fulvia. Then the drought began: For the next four years he failed to finish; engine failures and even an accident on a road section aboard his Datsun 160J ruined his hopes for several years running. Finally, in 1979, everything came together once more to trump Hannu Mikkola’s Mercedes-Benz 450 SLC.
Esapekka Lappi
6 years, 6 months, 19 days
Lappi controlled Rally Sweden 2024 from early on
Yes, Lappi’s wait for win number two is a new record – the longest in WRC history, though not by much.
There’s an element of Henri Toivonen to his win. Though a bit older than Toivonen, Lappi’s Rally Finland win in 2017 was that of a prodigious talent surprising the rally world by achieving so much so early in his top-flight career – it was only his fourth start in a World Rally Car.
That it’s taken six more years for the second one to come along would have been hard to believe, had you told anyone in 2017 that it’s how long we’d all be waiting.
That early success perhaps set the bar too high, too soon. Three podiums in his second season with Toyota seemed underwhelming by comparison. Then came a series of moves that simply failed to work: his shift to Citroën backfired, Lappi never really feeling at one with the C3 and then the team quitting almost as soon as Sébastien Ogier had abandoned the French marque for Toyota.
Citroën had publicly admitted that without a frontline driver to spearhead its WRC charge, it didn’t see the value in remaining there. That had to hurt, considering Lappi was still under contract to drive.
Citroën stint yielded three podium finishes
He then went to M-Sport at the worst time possible: when Covid-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, the Cumbrian squad went into survival mode, doing whatever it needed to simply stay afloat in the most challenging economic climate. The Fiesta WRC was no longer a match for its rivals during his stint there.
Lappi’s arrival at Hyundai, via a part-time season with Toyota, promised so much, and his progress looked strong in the first half of the season. The second half was a disaster: crashing out in Finland, Chile and Central Europe threatened his place in the team altogether. When Hyundai re-signed Ott Tänak, he was sent back to the part-time ranks again.
As it turned out, that was a blessing in disguise. Lappi’s optimal road position for Rally Sweden 2024 helped him hit the ground running. And when Takamoto Katsuta binned his Toyota, Lappi was free to end his six-year wait.
