How Monza's lottery winner matched a 27-year-old record

The 2020 World Rally Championship ended in heartbreak for Britain's Elfyn Evans as his 14-point advantage in the drivers' title race was whisked out from beneath him by a patch of Italian snow. Thus Sebastien Ogier claimed his seventh WRC title as Rally Monza joined the calendar for the first time.

Tensions were high when the trucks unloaded in the historic royal park and there were suggestions that some teams were rather less willing to be there than others. Event organisers had insisted that the itinerary would be fully compliant with the COVID legislation in place at the time, but it was sobering to know that Italy had suffered its most grievous toll of the pandemic so far on the opening day of the rally, with 993 lives lost.

Eight long weeks had passed since the previous round in Sardinia, throughout which time the expectations of British rally fans had hung over Evans like the Sword of Damocles. The nation had meanwhile saluted the 25th anniversary of Colin McRae's euphoric WRC title and paid fulsome tribute to Richard Burns 15 years after his tragic loss to cancer, which would have served only to remind Evans of exactly whose boots he was expected to fill. Sure enough, he managed to uncharacteristically reverse his Toyota Yaris into the barriers during shakedown.

Thursday's opening stage was dominated by the two fastest cars of the season: Ogier's Toyota and the Hyundai of Thierry Neuville, both of whom had to throw caution to the wind for any chance of beating Evans to the drivers' title. Come Friday morning, however, and it was Monza rally expert Dani Sordo who put his experience of the layout to best use, taking the overall lead as he aimed to carry Hyundai to the manufacturers' crown.

By now a mix of incessant rain and constant rally traffic had reduced Monza's historic circuit to 50% bog and 50% skating rink. Thus M-Sport's Esapekka Lappi rolled the dice and fitted four of his eight allocated snow tyres to his Ford Fiesta in a bid to find some extra grip.

Grip was indeed found, with Lappi taking the overall lead from Sordo while his M-Sport sister cars of Teemu Suninen and Gus Greensmith both went out - the former with terminal engine issues and the latter crashing into a gate.

No second invitation was needed for the rest of the field to bolt on their own snow tyres, and, over the remaining three stages of the day, Sordo carved away at Lappi's advantage to sit atop the leaderboard once again.

Sordo's pace was exactly what Hyundai needed to see because by this time Neuville was also out. The mercurial Belgian had started the day by dropping 20 seconds after sliding into a wire fence, but this indiscretion soon paled when he clipped one of the concrete blocks laid out on the historic Monza banking. Adding insult to injury, he then drowned his i20's engine in a watersplash.

A marshal plaintively held up a note at the startline warning of possible snow, but by then it was too late to do much but trust to luck

Ogier had also courted disaster, first spinning into a hay bale and then completing several corners with an impenetrable mist having descended on his windscreen. None of this drama delayed him unduly. The maestro still ended the day five seconds in front of Evans as the Welshman settled in for a long haul, knowing that fourth place would still guarantee him the title no matter what else happened around him.

On Saturday, the action finally departed the confines of the Monza encampment and headed up into the Bergamasque Alps for two loops of three closed road stages, which had been dubbed 'Monza Carlo' following the recce.

Heavy snow had fallen throughout the week but a combination of torrential rain and the snowploughs sent in by the rally organisers had cleared a path in readiness for some full-blooded asphalt action. Even so, further assistance was given by the FIA when it granted an extra pair of snow tyres to be allocated to each car in order to ensure that all possible contingencies were covered.

Ogier immediately swept through the first 25km stage of Selvino to reclaim the overall lead for Toyota, from Sordo, with Lappi hanging on grimly to third while Evans put a little breathing space between himself and fifth-placed Ott Tanak's Hyundai.

As the morning wore on, the crews were all happy to run on wet tyres. Sordo reclaimed his lead on the next stage, Gerosa, when Ogier went into tyre management mode, and Lappi was swallowed up by both Evans and then Tanak.

Having restored his rubber, Ogier then won the final stage in the loop, Costa Val Imagna, and the field returned to the service park. While they were safely tucked away in the lowlands, however, heavy snow began to fall in the mountains and chaos was about to unfold.

On the second run through Selvino, Greensmith's restarted rally came to a spectacular end when he hit a patch of snow and was fired off into the guardrail. This sent his Fiesta back across the road into a rock face, whereupon it rolled and traversed the road again, clearing the guardrail and dropping into the trees below.

Takamoto Katsuta's Yaris, another restarting entry after he struck a wall on Thursday's opening stage, made it through cleanly. But then Ole Christian Veiby, in Hyundai's fourth entry, came to grief on the same corner as Greensmith.

Unlike the Englishman, Veiby did not exit stage left. Instead the Norwegian's i20 scattered large parts of its front end across the road and came to rest broadside, forcing the stage to be abandoned.

Meanwhile, the snow still fell but, without much guidance available and without experiencing Selvino at full tilt, most of the crews elected to stay on wet tyres. A marshal plaintively held up a note at the startline warning of possible snow, but by then it was too late to do much but trust to luck. Evans's luck ran out soon afterwards.

"Obviously, starting the stage, a lot of standing water but I felt like we were having a good, clean, tidy run," he said. "Then the snow got a little bit worse but still the grip was surprising that we had for the most part, not really sliding at all, and then I basically came round a flat right corner with a short braking and the surface of the Tarmac had just changed."

The Yaris wobbled and Evans, by now a passenger, shouted "Ahhh, you bastard!" as it changed ends on him and dropped gently off the road. It was bitter, galling luck but the WRC now gained another shining example of what sort of a competitor Evans is.

Rather than throwing a tantrum or letting Ogier take his own chances on the roulette wheel, he and co-driver Scott Martin donned their jackets and jogged back up the stage to warn oncoming traffic to proceed with caution.

"Of course we feel for Elfyn also today. He has made a very strong season, very consistent, and we had really good fun to fight each other" Sebastien Ogier

Ogier only just made it through the fateful bend even with the furious gesticulations of his stranded team-mate. Yet thanks to Evans, the Frenchman made it through and extended his lead over Sordo by a further 16s.

The rally then descended into farce as the crews arrived at the start of their second run through Costa Valle Imagna only to find a complete whiteout. They sat around for a while until the organisers finally called a halt and brought them back for their scheduled run round the Monza mud bath before their final overnight halt.

Sunday dawned with just three more timed runs through the royal park separating Ogier from a seventh world title with a third different team.

Yes, the stages were slippery and tricksy and had already taken their toll upon the less experienced and more desperate crews, but by now any spark had gone out of proceedings.

Ogier and team-mate Kalle Rovanpera in the only other unblemished Yaris swept to a 1-2 on their first run. Rovanpera had been subdued all weekend, letting Ogier and Evans have their battle and ending up too far behind the Hyundais of Tanak and Sordo to have any influence on the manufacturers' points.

Sordo and Tanak finished 1-2 for Hyundai on the next stage, which was enough to virtually guarantee them the manufacturers' trophy. All that remained was the powerstage and one last blast around the Autodromo.

Evans had restarted and gave his all to try to wrest the five bonus points available for winning the powerstage, but overcooked it twice on his way round, which handed Katsuta the honours.

Ogier, Tanak and Sordo had no interest in going for glory, they simply wanted to claim their respective titles and leave 2020 behind them. In the end, not even losing his windscreen wipers for an awkward moment could derail Ogier's progress towards the inevitable.

"It's been a difficult weekend and this last stage was definitely not the most enjoyable, but the team have made such a great effort," said the champion, who emulated Juha Kankkunen in securing the title with three different manufacturers. Aptly, Kankkunen had also achieved the feat with Toyota in 1993 after previous successes with Peugeot (1985) and Lancia (1987, 1991).

But while understandably delighted at overturning his deficit to Evans, Ogier's thoughts were very much with his rival.

"Of course we feel for Elfyn also today," he continued. "He has made a very strong season, very consistent, and we had really good fun to fight each other. I'm sure next year is going to be about the same so I'm really looking forward to it as I decided to go for one more year. But today, yeah, I'm very happy.

"Not jumping in the air maybe like crazy because right now we are living in a time that, you know, a lot of people are suffering all over the world and, I mean, you have to be decent."

Ogier's sentiments were echoed by Hyundai's victorious team principal Andrea Adamo, for whom the manufacturers' championship is his first priority.

"It's complicated. So many images are passing by now," he said. "It's been an amazing year, it's been a tricky year, everyone has fought a lot. I know how much we have fought, how much pressure we had, what I had to do to try to protect everyone.

"I didn't see the team too much, just a couple of events, hopefully next year we see each other a lot more and come back to normal" Ott Tanak

"Everyone has been somehow personally touched [by COVID-19] and this year everyone lost someone maybe... I also have some friends that are no more with me due to this."

Adamo's tearful outpouring was arguably the most admirable sentiment expressed in a rally that confounded logic for much of the time.

Runner-up in Monza and outgoing drivers' champion Tanak had played his part for the team but was left rather nonplussed at the end of it all.

"It's been a very strange season," he opined. "I didn't see the team too much, just a couple of events, hopefully next year we see each other a lot more and come back to normal. So, that's how it is."

In any normal season, of the sort we took for granted before COVID-19 reared its ugly head, we would have had a dozen rallies, seen some breathtaking battles and rounded it all off with the closure that comes from crowning the champions.

We should of course be thankful that WRC Promoter, the FIA and the organising clubs collectively moved heaven and earth to bring us four additional rallies. Moreover, that those rallies have passed off safely and that the WRC community will be home for Christmas.

But the closure is lacking. Some people believe that closure is a bad thing, that it panders to our baser instincts and belittles the drama that has taken place if it's all neatly wrapped up at the end. That was the rationale which created the TV series Twin Peaks.

Its creators never intended us to discover who had killed Laura Palmer, the central mystery, but rather to use the show to make us think more about our place in the world. Oddly enough, the police station that featured in the show is now home to a rally school and a hyperactive blog about the sport. It oddly seems fitting.

Maybe in 25 years there will be a Twin Peaks-esque dream sequence in which the missing rallies from 2020 are played out. Probably the result would still be the same, but it would be reassuring to see nonetheless. Meanwhile, in just over a month's time, we'll be back in Monte Carlo...