What we learned from Central European Rally 2024

Both World Rally Championship titles could theoretically have been decided at Central European Rally, but instead both battles rumble on to the season finale in Japan.

As rally fans, that’s exactly what we want. If your pay slip reads ‘Toyota Gazoo Racing’ at the top, it’s brilliant news too with the manufacturers’ comeback still on. But if you’re in the Hyundai corner, despite still leading both contests, things are maybe nervier than initially thought.

Here’s what we learned from the penultimate round of the 2024 WRC season in Central Europe:

Hyundai is guaranteed a drivers’ champion

It wouldn’t be correct to say it felt like a formality, but many had Thierry Neuville down to be crowned world champion for the first time in his career at CER.

All he had to do was outscore team-mate Ott Tänak by two points. Simple enough task, right?

Wrong.

Things were looking good for Neuville, leading the rally until Saturday morning’s final stage where first a spin, and then a trip into a field caused by an optimistic pacenote, dumped him down to fourth.

With Tänak then fighting Ogier for the lead, any hopes of Neuville securing the title hinged on a Tänak mistake or mechanical failure – neither of which came.

But what we do now know is, for the first time ever, a Hyundai driver will win the drivers’ championship. Which one is still to be determined, but it would still take a totally absurd scenario for this one to slip from Neuville’s grasp.

Ogier’s in a mistake-heavy run of form

That Sébastien Ogier has now been mathematically eliminated from drivers’ championship contention is not a surprise. That it was his team-mates, Elfyn Evans and Takamoto Katsuta, that had to do the heavy-lifting for Toyota in the manufacturers’ race – and essentially bail the eight-time world champion out – was, however, a huge surprise.

Sixteen stages into the 18-stage event, that thought would have been laughable.

Ogier dropped the ball slightly with an overshoot on the first ‘Super Sunday’ stage, but had done an excellent job repelling the advances of Tänak on Saturday to provisionally net the full 18 points from the first portion of the rally.

The key word there is provisionally, as for the third rally in a row Ogier suffered an accident. Only this time, it cost him every single world championship point he thought he had earned.

The mistake appeared to be influenced by the lack of time available for any route note crew to traverse the stage beforehand, meaning Ogier was not aware just how muddy his fateful corner would be.

But, as he said, everybody else was in the same situation and nobody else made a mistake. Whether it was right that the route note crews weren’t able to head in for the second pass is a separate debate for another time.

What’s interesting here is things aren’t quite coming together for Ogier at the moment. Despite all of his speed, the results (and points haul) haven’t been the same since Finland when he became effectively a full-time driver again.

Who knows if there is anything to read into that, but a big result in Japan would be the perfect tonic to dilute the current pain.

Katsuta responds beautifully

It’s important not to underestimate the pressure Takamoto Katsuta was under at CER. Benched from Rally Chile, there could be no mistakes. And with Toyota in a huge race with Hyundai for the manufacturers’ title, the stakes could not be higher.

Add into that the presence of Sami Pajari – the man who took over Katsuta’s GR Yaris Rally1 in Chile and is very much seen as a key part of Toyota’s future – and you have the sort of scenario that perhaps might have broken the pre-Chile version of Katsuta.

Not a bit of it at CER.

Katsuta answered every single question asked of him and performed beautifully across all three (and a half) days. He demonstrated his speed with a stage win on Friday, but proved his maturity by backing off in the muddier sections.

He proved his reliability by sticking to the same strategy across Saturday, and proved his value by upping his speed on Sunday to top both ‘Super Sunday’ and the powerstage – netting a massively important 12 points for Toyota that could yet save its season.

This was the performance you’d expect from a seasoned veteran, not a driver recovering from his biggest career setback and under huge pressure to deliver. His best performance yet in the WRC? There aren’t many better that come to mind.

WRC2 now a straight Solberg/Pajari contest

Yohan Rossel’s controversial Rally Chile notional time managed to spill into CER with final confirmation that it would stand coming just as the Central European event had begun.

But in the end all of that proved irrelevant for the Frenchman, who massively misjudged his speed into a tightening left-hander and did substantial damage to his Citroën C3 Rally2.

He was lucky to be able to continue on Friday, but with heavy time loss his WRC2 title hopes were hanging by a thread. Another off on Saturday only compounded the problem.

Nothing other than a victory would have done for Rossel at CER, and all he could salvage was 11th.

He is therefore out of contention for this year’s title, with the spotlight shifting to Sami Pajari who can snatch the spoils from Oliver Solberg with a top result in Japan.

Beyond Rally shootout continues into 2025

A matter of weeks after being selected as the final three from an extensive training camp at M-Sport Poland, Lyssia Baudet, Claire Schönborn and Suvi Jyrkiäinen headed to CER with a massive opportunity dangling before their eyes.

They each thought that only one of them would be awarded the life-changing 2025 Junior WRC prize drive – so did we. But instead, two drivers – Baudet and Schönborn – will start the season in Sweden before one of them sees out the rest of the five-round campaign.

The pressure therefore defers to next February, but for now let’s celebrate what all three achieved. Especially Baudet and Schönborn – it was a genuine honor to stand and interview them as they realized how huge an opportunity they had in front of them.