Can Elfyn Evans be Britain’s next World Rally champion?

In sport, there will always be a pursuit of perfection. In motorsport, perfect seasons are unheard of but, more often than not, those who come the closest to it ultimately win championships.

It is fair to say that Elfyn Evans is one of those drivers who strives for perfection. The Welshman is known for a meticulous, no-stone-unturned approach and often pours hour upon hour into analysing onboard videos in search of the edge to achieve the ultimate dream – becoming World Rally champion.

After three rounds of the 2025 season, Evans had come close to perfection, finishing second in Monte Carlo before back-to-back wins in Sweden and Safari Rally Kenya. The results racked up 88 points from a maximum 105, equating to a championship lead of 36 points.

Now the season heads towards its sixth round in Sardinia with the Toyota driver holding a 30-point lead over team-mate Kalle Rovanpera. It is of course very early days when it comes to title talk, but the numbers look promising with a points tally 21 better than his previous best at this point in the season, after just five of the 14 rounds.

“If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it properly and that’s it,” declares Evans.

“It’s a pain in the arse,” he smiles, when asked about the constant striving for perfection through preparation. “I definitely think I’m going to pay the price for that at some point in terms of the longevity of my career. You only get one shot at it is the way I go.”

It’s this hard graft combined with natural talent that has led to Evans becoming one of the WRC’s elite drivers. After honing his WRC craft at M-Sport Ford from 2013-19 in a spell that had its fair share of ups and downs, including a season where he dropped back to WRC2 in 2016, Evans joined Toyota for 2020. He’s subsequently transformed into a title contender.

Evans showed his mettle by storming back to win in Sweden

Photo by: McKlein / Motorsport Images

In the COVID-19-affected 2020 and 2021 campaigns, Evans knocked on the championship door, only to be denied by one of rallying’s greatest: team-mate Sebastien Ogier. In both seasons Evans took the fight down to the wire, with 2020 the most agonising when an off in the snow at Rally Monza handed Ogier the crown.

Evans took a while to adjust to the move to hybrid, but in 2023 and last season he was again the runner-up, respectively to another Toyota team-mate in the form of Kalle Rovanpera and Hyundai man Thierry Neuville. Evans ended 2024 as the driver in form, with two second place finishes and a win in the Japan season finale.

So it should be no shock that Evans is in the title hunt this year, although the manner in which he has come out of the blocks has caught many by surprise. Has anything changed for Evans that has enabled him to enjoy this career-best start to a season?

“Sometimes it just naturally falls in your favour, which it has done in a few of the rallies at the start of the year” Elfyn Evans

“I have been through a lot of ups and downs, and it can go down again,” he reckons. “Naturally things will develop and progress, but I don’t feel that different. Maybe the expectation is now a lot higher than what I had of myself in 2020. You always want to keep on improving. I’m not young anymore so sometimes it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks.

“We started this year moving in the right direction. There has been no real big change – maybe the types of events have suited us. Obviously the more difficult events [last year] were the gravel ones. That is still a work in progress, let’s say.

“I’m not really surprised [by the start to the year]. We have had no bad luck or things not go our way, which is normally part of the game. It's bound to hit us at some point.

“There is definitely a lot more excitement about it, but I’m realistic about how things can play out over the next seven or eight rallies. It’s a nice cushion but it’s still very, very early days.”

Evans appears to be more relaxed this season – and his steely determination remains

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Toyota team principal Jari-Matti Latvala felt there was too much pressure on Evans to deliver as one of only two full-time drivers last year, although the Gwynedd man doesn’t subscribe to that theory.

From the outside it appears he is more relaxed this year and there is definitely a steely determination to win. This was evident in Sweden, where he lost the lead on Sunday morning to team-mate Takamoto Katsuta before storming back to take the victory.

There have also been changes to the regulations this year, with hybrid power removed from the Rally1 cars, which now operate on a new control tyre provided by Hankook. That rubber has certainly provided a challenge for Rovanpera, and it appears that these changes have contributed to Evans’s fast start to 2025. 

“Sometimes it just naturally falls in your favour, which it has done in a few of the rallies at the start of the year,” explains Evans. “But the tyres have shifted towards my style, at least for the specific events we had at the start of the year. Losing the hybrid power is not a huge factor.

“Obviously there are subtle changes that were already making gains in terms of the overall balance of the car, and maybe just taking the hybrid has further improved that side of things. But there has been no real clear step to make me say that this feels way better.”

This is Evans’s view, but what do those who work closely with him believe? Since Evans joined Toyota he has been paired with experienced Portuguese engineer Rui Soares, who previously looked after Hayden Paddon and Kris Meeke.

According to Evans, Soares is a “proper bobble hatter”, but more importantly the relationship that has formed over the past five years is a strong one. “It works well, we understand each other and I think he knows what I want from the car,” smiles Evans.

Engineer Soares (left) is ‘glass half full’ to Evans’s ‘half empty’

Photo by: McKlein / Motorsport Images

That feeling is clearly mutual when sitting down with Soares at Rally Portugal to understand what makes Evans tick as a rally driver. “It made me very happy to work with Elfyn when he joined the team because I was big fan of his dad [1996 British rally champion Gwyndaf Evans, who is part of Evans’s route note crew],” recalls Soares.

“I still remember the first test we did in Monte Carlo in 2020 with Elfyn. I remember looking at his times and thinking, ‘This is fast.’ I thought, ‘Wow, we are onto something big here.’

“In the beginning he was a very shy guy and very difficult to read, and it was very difficult to understand if he was happy or unhappy, but over the years it has become easier. For sure, he understands how to work best with the team and to push the team in a direct way.

“If he goes better he starts to be more relaxed and then if you are more relaxed you start to take the best from yourself without realising it” Rui Soares

“He is probably one of the cleverest drivers you will ever come across. He’s also a very good mechanic so you can’t bullshit him. He’s not the most positive to himself and sometimes he’s the most self-critical person I know.

“Elfyn is someone that gauges himself against the clock and that’s why sometimes he could be beating everybody and still want more. He always jokes and says I see the glass half full and he is totally the opposite.”

Focusing on the ‘Evans 2.0’ of 2025, Soares admits that the changes to the tyres and the removal of hybrid have played in Evans’s favour to some degree: “You take out the hybrid and there are things which change on the car that suit better his driving for sure. The way he was using the hybrid was the correct way, but the car with the hybrid was maybe not ideal for him.

Evans (right, with co-driver Scott Martin) is meticulous in his pre-event prep

Photo by: Toyota Racing

“It is more that he has adapted to the tyres quicker than others, and the hybrid has less influence, but it’s the whole package.

“Car-wise it was not always easy to get the things he wanted and sometimes it’s very frustrating for us because we can see where the struggles are. When we came to Central Europe last year things started to click and then it’s a snowball effect.

“If he goes better he starts to be more relaxed and then if you are more relaxed you start to take the best from yourself without realising it. Maybe he is more relaxed than we have seen him in a long time, which definitely is a good thing.

“As you grow up you start to see fewer issues. If you asked me four years ago, maybe we were too focused on an issue and would dedicate too much time to it. Now, before we do a change, we try to understand if there is something we can do on the driving style before trying to adapt the car. This is something that has come with maturity in this relationship.”

Evans is in one of the strongest positions to achieve rallying’s greatest prize, but he isn’t getting carried away. A run to sixth in Portugal last month proved a bump in the road as old struggles on rough gravel came to the surface, now amplified by the disadvantage of starting first on the road. The next few rallies will provide the ultimate litmus test for Evans’s title tilt.

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Evans survived car-breaking conditions to take Safari triumph

Photo by: McKlein / Motorsport Images