It is, on the face of it, it’s one of the season’s more extraordinary revelations: Elfyn Evans has been dropped from Toyota Gazoo Racing’s point-scoring line-up for next week’s final round of the World Rally Championship.
Now, we need to be very clear here: the championship leader will still be driving a Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 in Sardinia. He just won’t be scoring points for the manufacturer.
As you can imagine, cyberspace is alive with thinking and theory, so we’ve done a bit of digging in and around the virtual service park to come up with the thinking behind the move. And, in all honesty, it’s pretty straightforward.
Evans’ title rivals Sami Pajari and Oliver Solberg both have fresher engines than him. You are, of course, permitted an engine change when the engine is damaged in an accident. So, for example, Sébastien Ogier’s car from Finland had its motor replaced, so the Frenchman starts in Italy with a new unit.
Solberg’s car had its engine changed after his crash in Greece but, without retiring from a leg since Croatia, the engine in Evans’ car has done considerably more miles than any of the others.
Evans' team-mate's engines are all fresher than his
Sami Pajari drives for the Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT2, so he’s able to take an engine change whenever it suits.
One source from a rival team told DirtFish: “This makes complete sense. Elfyn’s car has done pretty much everything and while you can work on the cars between events, there’s nothing like bringing a fresh engine.
“Would he have been disadvantaged? In terms of pure performance, almost certainly not, but there’s always the potential with some reliability issue when the engines have been through a lot of cycles.
“This seems like a very fair way to equalize the fight.”
Only Solberg and Ogier will score points for Toyota in Sardinia, with the manufacturers’ title already secured at the previous round in Chile.
