How the WRC title race was ignited by Evans in Finland

Two years ago, Elfyn Evans joined an exclusive club of eight drivers heralding from outside the Nordic nations to have conquered the revered Rally Finland. Last weekend, the Welsh Toyota star proved that was no fluke as he ignited his World Rally Championship title aspirations with a dominant victory to sit alongside Finnish rallying royalty Ari Vatanen and Timo Salonen as two-time winners of the event.

After reigning world champion and points leader Kalle Rovanpera had delivered a Sebastien Loeb-like domination in Rally Estonia a fortnight before the ‘Grand Prix on Gravel’, the script seemed set, and maybe the title race, over. Surely Finland’s first world champion for 20 years would end a six-year wait for a home-grown Rally Finland winner and take another step in his WRC title defence…

That prospect looked likely after seven stages. But, as history has proved, the high-speed rollercoaster gravel stages are tough to crack and can catch out the best. While Rovanpera reminded everyone that he is human, Evans avoided the pitfalls. A blistering dose of speed and precision, in challenging wet conditions, resulted in his best showing yet in a Rally1 car to win a rally of attrition.

As much as this was a victory for Evans and co-driver Scott Martin, it was redemption for Toyota. The team based in the rally’s host city of Jyvaskyla were beaten in their own backyard by Hyundai 12 months ago when Ott Tanak defeated Rovanpera. As if there wasn’t enough expectation on the team’s and Rovanpera’s shoulders, Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda was in town acting as team principal, or ‘cheerleader’ as he put it. The self-confessed WRC fan stood in for Jari-Matti Latvala as the Finn made a special one-off comeback outing in a fourth GR Yaris, his first start since 2020.

Last year’s defeat to Hyundai left a bitter taste in the mouth, prompting a thorough event preparation that included Evans and Rovanpera competing in a national rally the weekend prior. Those eight stages in wet conditions were perhaps worth their weight in gold. "We did a lot of work,” related Latvala. "I think that Tampere rally in the wet conditions was very important for this event as I think the biggest differences were made in the slippery wet conditions.”

While Rovanpera attempted to downplay the importance of a home victory by simply saying that he wants to win all rallies, the wall of air horns from a huge crowd that greeted him in Thursday’s night’s super special in downtown Jyvaskyla reminded him what was at stake. “An amazing feeling – I can almost hear the people from inside of the car, I know how loud it is,” said Rovanpera, who clipped a kerb on his way to setting the third fastest time. “It feels so amazing in the car when you know the atmosphere is so great.”

The M-Sport Ford of Tanak upset the homecoming by taking the stage win to grab an early lead, but bad luck seems to be following the Estonian. For the second event in succession, his rally ended before it really got started. Bedrock pierced through his Puma’s sump guard, punching a hole in the engine in stage three (Lankamaa), resulting in a loss of power and a fire breaking out. Luckily Tanak and co-driver Martin Jarveoja were able to prevent the car from going up in flames completely, but their rally was over. “It was not a little [fire], and it was a critical situation to be honest as we were alone in the forest,” recounted Tanak. “We drove as long as EV mode allowed us to cool it [the car] down, but when we stopped it was full of fire. We were lucky to have two extinguishers there.”

Victory on the opening stage would be as good as it got for Tanak and M-Sport

Photo by: M-Sport

To compound M-Sport’s misery, Pierre-Louis Loubet in the sister Puma clipped a rock, destroying his left-rear suspension in the same stage just minutes after Tanak trundled to a halt. Loubet was able to rejoin the rally on Saturday but had to battle an engine issue on Sunday. Crestfallen team principal Richard Millener summed up the mood in the Blue Oval camp: “It’s pretty challenging at the moment for us all, and these guys [ the mechanics] have been out here for three weeks. They’ve not gone home since Estonia. So for them to put all this effort in and for us to be where we are, it’s really sad for everyone.”

The M-Sport double exit was just the start of a dramatic Friday. Two stages later another rally contender fell when heavy rain hit stage five. Esapekka Lappi had struggled to find grip on the damp roads, admitting he couldn’t “drive any faster”. In stage five an optimistic pacenote caught the Finn out, sending his Hyundai into the trees at a frightening speed. Lappi and co-driver Janne Ferm were lucky to avoid serious injury. “OK, over here it feels bad [to retire] but the first sentence from my mouth when I saw Janne was that ‘it is good that we are alive’ because it was really scary when I saw the trees,” said a wide-eyed Lappi. “In stage four, I pushed really hard and I had some moments there and still the time was not really there. The Toyotas were just too fast. I didn’t come here to fight for the third position. I have no answers, I thought we were at a good level, but it seems like we are behind.”

As Tanak and Lappi grabbed the headlines, Rovanpera assumed the rally lead on stage two and was seemingly in control, with speed in reserve. The championship leader rattled off five consecutive stage wins but was kept on his toes by Evans, who trailed the Finn by a mere 5.7s after seven stages.

"It was quite a, let’s say, stupid crash. Normally you go through somewhere fast and you know you made a mistake, but it went and that was it. I tried to correct it and couldn’t do it" Kalle Rovanpera

But stage eight, the second pass through the legendary Myhinpaa test – back in the rally for 2023 – crushed the dreams of thousands of expectant Finns for another year. The sight of Rovanpera’s GR Yaris on its roof shocked onlookers and the drivers as they passed the wreckage, such has been the world champion’s form this year. Rovanpera had clipped a rock, which sent the car into a spectacular end-over-end roll, causing terminal chassis damage. “It was quite a, let’s say, stupid crash,” he admitted. “Normally you go through somewhere fast and you know you made a mistake, but it went and that was it. I tried to correct it and couldn’t do it. It is disappointing because the lead was going quite well and the driving was quite easy and I didn’t overpush.”

Unusually for Latvala, he witnessed one of his drivers retire from the cockpit rather than the service park. “It was very sad to see this,” said Latvala, who climbed to fifth after almost half the Rally1 field had retired after eight of 22 stages. “But Kalle has had a fantastic season and it is his first mistake of the season. When you drive at the level he does, everyone will have at least one mistake. Nobody will have a season without mistakes.”

Rovanpera’s exit handed the lead to Evans, an opportunity he didn’t waste. But the first objective was to ensure he completed Friday, not an easy task considering the slippery conditions. He also had to deal with a fired-up Thierry Neuville as Rovanpera’s retirement gave the Belgian Hyundai star a sniff of victory. Now Neuville pushed, winning the final three stages of the day to close to 6.9s off Evans.

Toyota’s Takamoto Katsuta held third, 12.4s ahead of the Hyundai of Teemu Suninen, but it was Latvala who had the biggest smile, relishing the chance to tackle Rally Finland once again. His fifth place was accomplishing the fourth-to-eighth pre-event target set for him by four-time world champion Juha Kankkunen. Latvala and co-driver Juho Hanninen even allowed themselves time to wave to fans at points during their runs.

Any hopes Neuville had of overhauling Evans were extinguished on Saturday. This will be remembered as Evans’s most dominant day of his WRC career to date. Despite facing challenging slippery wet gravel, he seemed to be at ease and the fastest stage times flowed. He was simply untouchable. A streak of seven consecutive stage wins extended his advantage to 32.1s as Neuville fought with his i20 N. As ever, the understated Evans refused to get too excited. “I hate to say that it comes easy because it doesn’t come easy,” he reckoned, “but when things just click and work, you are not forcing yourself and you don’t feel uncomfortable, and you don’t feel like you are taking crazy risks, it just sort of happens.”

For Neuville, the game was up and the focus switched to taking home a decent haul of points for second with Rovanpera absent. “There was nothing more we could have done to catch P1,” he declared. “We are struggling with the rear and with the traction and the movement of the car. They are small things we need to work on.”

With Evans on course for a comfortable victory, the focus switched to an intense battle for third between Katsuta and Suninen. The Finn inherited the podium spot after Katsuta‘s wild spin on stage 12. But the Japanese fought back to produce a stunning fastest time on the sodden and rutted stage 18, the test more reminiscent of the mud baths seen at the Safari Rally. It was a result he felt was partly down to the advice from his now fallen team-mate Rovanpera, after he sat in the car with the reigning world champion during a pre-event test. "I was scared so much, to be honest,” revealed Katsuta. "Kalle is very good in these conditions and he has been teaching me a lot. I tried drifting and I was pushing like hell.”

Evans’s confidence behind the wheel of the GR Yaris was outlined on Sunday. He opted to take the commitment levels back a notch but still claimed two of the three morning stages to extend his lead to 38.2s over a beaten Neuville, who was already thinking about the Power Stage. But the Walloon was to be denied the five bonus points here too – Evans put the icing on the cake of a standout display to record a second win of the season with a margin of 39.1s. “It's been a pretty good weekend,” he smiled. “Of course, we're sorry for the loss of Kalle at the start of the rally but after that, it's been really fantastic to drive this car – it's such a joy to be behind the wheel on these roads and we're really happy with this one.”

Neuville was happy too after scoring his first Finland podium in a decade. “It's a big relief to be on the podium in Finland again after 10 years of, I would say, a struggle,” he said. “It shows that together with the team and the changes that are ongoing we are going in the right way.”

Third place went to Katsuta after seeing off a valiant challenge from Suninen. After a confidence destroying Estonia, a fourth career WRC podium was just the tonic, made even better with the success coming in front of an overjoyed Mr Toyoda. “My first podium in Europe and I didn't expect it in Finland! I am very happy,” enthused Katsuta. “Akio-san is here this weekend and it's been very special for me because he has been supporting me since the beginning.”

Toyoda joined the crews on the podium, where he was doused in champagne to the point where he joked that he felt drunk. For a man who said over the weekend that he “loves WRC like a kid loves ice cream”, it was a dream result.

"It’s been something really phenomenal that I will remember for the rest of my life" Jari-Matti Latvala

Just as dream-like was Latvala’s run to fifth as the last of the Rally1 runners to complete the full distance, and the Finnish veteran even claimed the final Power Stage point. “It’s been something really phenomenal that I will remember for the rest of my life,” sighed Latvala. “We could just drive with our own rhythm and to end up fifth overall and even score in the Power Stage, it’s just fantastic.” Oliver Solberg emerged as the top Rally2 runner in sixth but elected not to score WRC2 points for this round, which meant the WRC2 win went to Skoda driver Sami Pajari, who is touted as Finland’s next star.

Finland’s current star now has an advantage of just 25 points to Evans, who undoubtedly found something in both himself and the GR Yaris last weekend. Could Rovanpera have more of a fight on his hands to repeat his world title?

Can Rovanpera bounce back in Greece next month?

Photo by: McKlein / Motorsport Images