Thierry Neuville ended a 14-month winless streak… not that we really noticed, because Sébastien Ogier became a nine-time World Rally champion.
Weirdly it’s the third time Neuville has won a round of the WRC while a Toyota driver clinched the championship. In 2019 he won in Spain as Tänak became world champion, and four years later Neuville conquered CER while Kalle Rovanperä secured his second world crown.
But more about Neuville later. We’ve a world champion to celebrate and a Rally Saudi Arabia to pick apart.
For one final time in 2025, here’s what we learned:
Ogier pulls it off
The threat first existed when he took the lead of the championship in Mexico 2023, after missing the trip to Sweden. Now, he’s actually done it. Sébastien Ogier is the first driver to win the world title, after deliberately not completing a full season.
I say deliberately, because Sébastien Loeb of course missed the final four events in 2006 through injury, and still clinched the title.
The nature of Rally Saudi Arabia, with its road cleaning and requirement for caution, meant we weren’t treated to an epic showdown between Ogier and Evans that the points situation prior to the weekend promised.
But as ever, there was an air of inevitability about Ogier that meant his coronation as world champion, four years since he last wore the crown, was no real surprise – even if he was the driver behind prior to the finale.
His strategy will irk plenty, but I truly believe only Ogier would have been good enough to pull it off. Yes he avoided road cleaning, but he also gave up a potential 105 points. It’s important to marvel at a sportsman at his peak, and that’s what Ogier remains – at nearly 42!
Congratulations as well to Vincent Landais, who’s had a tougher career path than most remember to become world champion. I bet there’s not many moments where he regrets that decision to leave Pierre-Louis Loubet for Ogier in late 2022.
Evans the most unfortunate runner-up ever?
You’d be hard pushed to find anyone who doesn’t agree this was Elfyn Evans’ best WRC season to date.
Some stunning victories at the start of the year married to impressive consistency (and no real mistakes that I can remember) made for a compelling title campaign that was only undone by the individual brilliance of his old nemesis.
Ogier himself recognized Evans would’ve deserved the title as much as him. Evans’ rebuttal? “Six wins, you can’t take that away.”
Whether you feel it’s unfair Ogier should be able to win by missing three rallies or not, it’s impossible not to feel for Evans who had all of his full-season rivals covered. But outscoring Ogier just once on the 11 rallies they both contested just proved too costly for the Welshman.
Neuville avoids an unwanted record
I’ll be honest, I already had a graphic scheduled on our content planning program for this week, comparing Richard Burns’ 2002 season with Thierry Neuville’s 2025.
The link of course being that neither driver had won an event during their title defense.
Neuville’s drive last weekend had me hitting ‘delete’. At the final hurdle, the Belgian escaped joining Burns with that unwanted record – and deservedly so. He had his mojo back in Saudi Arabia, and took the right approach to steer himself towards success.
Team-mate Adrien Fourmaux’s disaster at Friday’s final time control obviously helped, as did Mãrtiņš Sesks’ downfall on the penultimate stage (more on him later), but Neuville’s had his fair share of misfortune in 2025 so you can’t begrudge him a pay day.
He has been very quick to caution this means nothing for 2026, but at least his, and more importantly Hyundai’s, morale will be boosted by this result.
Pajari a credible contender
So much of Sami Pajari’s debut season in a Rally1 car has been hard to read, given Toyota’s preference he learns the rallies rather than chases results.
Oliver Solberg coming in and winning on his one shot didn’t exactly help Pajari’s reputation either, outwardly at least.
But ironically every rally since has been deeply encouraging. Either entering events he’s done before in a Rally1 car, or that nobody has done before, Pajari has been a credible contender.
That first podium in Japan may well have opened the floodgates and topped up the Finn’s confidence, as he even confessed his “mission” was to win in Saudi Arabia.
And he nearly did – leading his first WRC event and fighting for victory until a tire change on (unlucky for him) SS13 restricted him to fourth.
It’ll be exciting to see what Pajari can do in 2026 with relevant experience of all but one of the rallies.
Sesks shows his old self
For a variety of reasons, Mãrtiņš Sesks hasn’t been able to replicate his Poland-Latvia heroics of 2024 through his European outings in 2025. The Middle East was a different story.
Why?
“I don’t know,” Sesks offered. “Actually, maybe it’s just because it’s a neutral environment. Maybe that’s why.”
It seems the most plausible explanation. We saw the power the benefit of event experience has for Sesks when he made his Rally1 debut, then suddenly he was on the back foot on rallies he’d rarely (sometimes never) done before.
Level the playing field and look at the result. Once again, Sesks looked like the driver we all got excited about. It’s a suckerpunch for him, and M-Sport, that he never got the podium that was on offer, but for both to prove their potential was important.
Saudi the new toughest rally
Sorry Safari Rally Kenya, your title’s been pinched. There wasn’t even a moment’s hesitation from Oliver Solberg when asked if Rally Saudi Arabia is tougher.
“Yes,” he said. “Safari is tough because of the road and the rain and the fech fech and so on, but here it’s hard for the suspension, hard for the tires and transmission you know, everything – it’s hard for the car.
“You can see this weekend you can’t go flat out all the time and the results are changing all the time. So, yeah, it’s been a big challenge.”
A challenge too far? Some thought so, others respected the demands, but pretty much everyone agreed it shouldn’t be the season finale.
The preference is for the season showdown to be all about the right foot rather than the right foot forward. Attack over approach. The gruelling nature of the Saudi Arabian stages were a far cry from a flat-out sprint.
I find it hard to disagree, but every rally should have a USP, and you can’t say Saudi Arabia wasn’t unique.
