This is what we all feared. A Toyota driver gapping the rest in the World Rally Championship.
Except it’s not Kalle Rovanperä doing the gapping.
Elfyn Evans’ superb start to 2025 continued apace at a Safari Rally Kenya that yet again delivered drama and chaos at every turn.
Here’s what we learned from the third instalment of this year’s WRC story:
Hyundai finally outscores Toyota in Kenya
It was hardly the perfect rally for Hyundai, with driveshaft concerns affecting two cars and Adrien Fourmaux sidelined after the first stage with an electrical gremlin.
And, let’s not forget, Toyota maintained its unbeaten run of victories at the Safari since the WRC returned to Africa in 2021.
But, for the first time ever, Hyundai got two cars on the Kenyan podium and outscored Toyota by a handsome 22 points.
What does this mean for the rest of the season? It’s hard to tell, given Hyundai made the eyebrow-raising decision to run its 2024-spec i20 instead of the upgraded one it rolled out in Sweden.
But for once, as Hyundai Motorsport president and team principal Cyril Abiteboul remarked, there is joy for Hyundai and not just Toyota in Africa.
Still no stopping Evans
The last thing this year’s championship challengers could afford was for Evans to extend his gap at the Safari. But that’s exactly what he did.
Securing back-to-back WRC victories for the first time in his career, the Welshman’s purple patch continued in Kenya as he bossed the field once more – albeit in a very different way to Sweden.
This wasn’t a rally won on pace but instead patience and reliability. Evans had the least problems and made it count with a well-managed victory.
If Tänak, Neuville and Rovanperä weren’t already aware of what they had to do to try and get the better of Evans this year, they can be under no illusions now.
Championships aren’t won in three rallies, but this level of excellence from Evans is starting to become the norm – particularly when you consider his three podium finishes from three (including one win) at the end of last season.
Rovanperä suffering his worst start ever
The obvious statistic to point to that demonstrates the difficulty of Kalle Rovanperä’s season is this: despite only starting one round instead of three, Toyota team-mate Sébastien Ogier is still ahead of him in the championship.
Ouch.
While in Monte and Sweden it was his struggles to adapt to the new Hankook tires that dogged Rovanperä, in Kenya it was purely misfortune.
A spate of punctures, broken suspension and finally the electrical issue that ultimately forced him out, Safari wasn’t meant to be for Rovanperä this time.
But what about the quest to add another title to his resumé? Nothing is impossible – particularly for a talent as prodigious as Rovanperä – but a 57-point deficit after just three rallies is substantial.
The fact is Rovanperä has never started a WRC season in the top class with as few points (31) or without any podiums at this stage of the year.
Fourmaux in need of a fightback
Things started so perfectly for Adrien Fourmaux with a dream WRC debut podium for Hyundai at the Monte Carlo Rally, but the wheels have come off the bus since.
The pace is not in question. We saw it in Sweden as he ran in the front group before his bizarre helmet incident, and we saw it again in Kenya with his full 10 pointer on Sunday – amusingly meaning Fourmaux bagged one point for every stage he completed.
But like in Sweden, where he made a mistake and ran into a snowbank off the back of an unfortunate event, Fourmaux made a bad call on Friday to keep driving on a puncture which subsequently destroyed his suspension and put him out for the day again.
Dealt a bad hand? Yes, probably. But could he have dealt with that hand better? Also, yes probably.
A more complete performance in Gran Canaria – an event he’s won in the past when it was a round of the ERC – to get his momentum back on track wouldn’t go amiss.
Katsuta hasn’t learned enough
What a disaster.
So much of Takamoto Katsuta’s Safari Rally Kenya was great. Big stage times and impressive resolve to battle through illness and a more than fair share of punctures.
But that powerstage crash was exactly the sort of error that led to him being benched for an event last season.
In Sweden, Katsuta proved he has the ability to be responsibly fast – running at the front, but not on the edge of disaster.
In Kenya, the opposite was true.
And this is the big frustration for Toyota: clearly Katsuta has the pace to be a real frontrunner in the WRC, but he cannot keep making these sort of mistakes.
Greensmith maintains his WRC2 habit
Making the step back to WRC2 in 2023, Gus Greensmith was immediately victorious at Rally México.
Last year, he took top honors at the Safari, despite feeling more at home on the toilet than in his Škoda Fabia RS Rally2.
The Briton made it three from three last weekend with yet another win to kick off his WRC2 campaign.
How much this means for the rest of the season is unclear given the complexities of a WRC2 title battle.
But they were important points for Greensmith to score, particularly as Sweden victor Oliver Solberg could only manage fifth as his Toyota got beached in a deep section of fech-fech while leading.
For Greensmith, he’ll just be hoping history doesn’t totally repeat itself and he can keep his winning momentum rolling towards a title.
WRC drivers take a stand
In the wake of WoRDA (World Rally Drivers’ Alliance)’s formation, and the meeting with FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem failing to happen yet, it was predictable that the WRC drivers would take a stand in Kenya.
And that’s precisely what they did: boycotting stage-end interviews in English, or altogether, as a result of the new scrutiny and financial penalties linked to bad language.
That made the feel of the Safari strange, with stage-end interviews a key part of the broadcast offering – but there was the odd slip-up.
Evans arrived at the end of Friday’s first stage and initially answered in English, before realizing the plan was to speak in Welsh and corrected himself. And on the same stage, a frustrated Grégoire Munster (who was caught in the dust of Sami Pajari who punctured) gave a full response in English.
But the stance was united, and in the end stage-end interviewers gave up attempting to ask any questions other than the powerstage, where all Rally1 drivers gave a response in English.
As Thierry Neuville said: “I think we sent an important message this weekend.”
The FIA has promised to open dialogue with WoRDA after the event, so all attention turns to how this situation develops in time for Rally Islas Canarias in four weeks’ time.
