How Toyota reignited its WRC title challenge in Chile's Rally GB tribute act

On a weekend where protests against freedom of speech and notional times grabbed the headlines, Kalle Rovanpera let his driving do the talking in Chile. The reigning two-time world champion claimed a fourth win from a partial World Rally Championship campaign, offering a lifeline for Toyota as it reignited hopes of reeling in Hyundai for a fourth consecutive manufacturers’ crown.

This was not a straightforward 15th career win for Rovanpera and co-driver Jonne Halttunen. Chile’s loose gravel roads initially seemed to unsettle the Finn and his driving style that has conquered the toughest of WRC rallies was unable to deliver its usual blistering speed. It appeared Toyota team-mate Elfyn Evans had the edge, as the Welshman dared to clinch a maiden win from a difficult campaign, until mother nature intervened to turn the rally on its head.

As history has proven, when conditions become adverse Rovanpera not only survives, he thrives. Thick fog and rain did its best to test the WRC’s aces to their limits and it was Rovanpera who emerged from the gloom to secure victory by 23.4 seconds from Evans.

“The win actually feels like a good one,” said Rovanpera. “I don’t think I took any big risks [in the fog]. Of course, you need to push and keep going even in the really difficult conditions, but I didn’t really feel anything too bad, but for sure it was a really clever drive.”

It was a victory that relieved mounting pressure on Toyota after what team principal Jari-Matti Latvala labelled as two “devastating Sundays” in Finland and Greece that had seemingly delivered a hammer blow to the team’s title hopes in both the drivers’ and manufacturers’ championships.

For Toyota, the response couldn’t have gone any better – a 1-2 on Saturday and in the rally overall, a 1-2-3 on Super Sunday and a 1-2 in the Power Stage. Its utter domination of Rally Chile halved Hyundai’s advantage to 17 points with two rounds remaining.

No "big risks", but there was big air from Rovanperä in the foggy conditions

Photo by: McKlein / Motorsport Images

“This result really gets us back in the fight for the manufacturer title,” said Latvala. “It is a big relief for us and for the Japanese side [of the business] that we still have a chance.”

Toyota’s determination to turn its fortunes around wasn’t the only hangover from the Acropolis Rally. Any thoughts that an FIA stewards’ decision to hand Sebastien Ogier a suspended €30,000 fine for stage-end interview comments directed at rally organisers over hanging dust in Greece would be swept under the carpet were quickly quashed. If anything, the flames had been fanned further by the FIA’s wider clampdown on driver comments, resulting in Formula 1 world champion Max Verstappen receiving a public service order for swearing in a Singapore Grand Prix press conference.

Ogier and Hyundai’s Ott Tanak took a leaf out of Verstappen’s book by staging a similar protest, issuing short responses to questions posed by reporters at stage-end interviews in shakedown and throughout Friday’s six stages. For Ogier, it was all about making a point, which his relative silence at stage-end achieved.

It had quickly become evident that the Hyundai i20 N was not a fan of Chile’s loose gravel roads

“Today I don’t feel like I want to talk and like I say I am sorry for all the people that deserve better than that, but we have been told by the top of the FIA to shut our mouths, so it is a bit sad,” said Ogier.

Tanak went as far to suggest that “it is really difficult to know how to act” and that drivers are living in “strange times”, adding: “You need to be very careful what you say and how you express your emotions, they are not really allowed for the moment.” The FIA declined to issue an official response to the protest when asked by Autosport.

Ogier may have offered little to the media on Friday but his driving certainly provided plenty to talk about. The eight-time world champion lit up the timing screens to surge into an early lead thanks to a blistering time on the opening stage.

Officials then cancelled the test on spectator safety grounds after championship leader Thierry Neuville, Tanak and Ogier had completed their runs. Notional times were awarded to the rest of the field, a matter that would rear its head later in the day.

Tanak initially made the running for Hyundai, but the i20Ns would not be in the mix when it counted

Photo by: McKlein / Motorsport Images

Ogier’s time in the lead was short-lived. The Toyota part-timer knocked a tyre off the rim when his GR Yaris slid wide and clipped a bank in stage three. For the second rally in succession an early issue realistically ended his victory hopes after losing 1m45s to change a wheel. The Frenchman ended Friday in ninth.

It had quickly become evident that the Hyundai i20 N was not a fan of Chile’s loose gravel roads. Neuville and Tanak struggled to tame the car, starting at the top of the order. The struggles were not purely down to road position as Esapekka Lappi was seemingly unable to find grip and the confidence to push either. Neuville likened it to “driving on ice” such were the grip levels, while Tanak told his engineers after stage one that “a top-six or top-eight is the maximum, it was not driving at all”.

But Tanak is not one to give up easily, especially at an event where he headed undefeated following a triumphs for Toyota in 2019 and M-Sport Ford last year. The Estonian made set-up changes in between stages to bring his car more into the window and, while he didn’t set a fastest time, he ended Friday with a 0.4s lead over Evans, or so he thought.

That 0.4s advantage turned into 3s deficit as Evans was handed the rally lead after Toyota requested the stewards to review the notional time awarded for stage one. The initial notional times awarded were based off Neuville’s effort, which was slowest.

After reviewing the times posted in the second pass of the stage, Evans, M-Sport’s Adrien Fourmaux and Toyota’s Sami Pajari were handed new times. This prompted Hyundai to protest the decision, but stewards declared the reallocation of nationals times was “fair and reasonable”.

Heading into Saturday’s six stages Rovanpera sat in third, 10.1s behind after a Friday during which he had struggled to wrangle speed out his GR Yaris. The world champion’s struggles were plain to see when he made a rare error in stage four, overshooting a corner, which required a quick grab of reverse. It came as a surprise to many, but not Rovanpera.

“I’m happy the day is over,” said Rovanpera. “The way you need to drive these roads is completely opposite to how I drive on gravel so it is really not working, but also the set-up makes for a not so comfortable a feeling.”

Countryman Sami Pajari, who received a shock call-up to replace benched Toyota regular Takamoto Katsuta, did impress in only his second Rally1 start to occupy fourth. That would eventually translate to a commendable sixth come Sunday. The equally impressive Gregoire Munster made the most of a return to a venue that offered him a Rally1 debut last year to hold fifth that would become seventh at the rally finish. 

Rovanpera was glad to see the back of the first day after struggling for pace, but turned his fortunes around the following day as the weather deteriorated

Photo by: Toyota Racing

Neuville managed to limit the damage to sit sixth, ahead of Lappi, who was delayed by a delaminated right-rear tyre in stage four to add to his struggles. A lack of tyres ended Martins Sesks’ return to Rally1 with M-Sport prematurely as he too clipped a bank and took two tyres off the rim while carrying only one spare. The Latvian rejoined the rally to continue his learning experience, which included a bizarre rear-wing failure on Sunday.

But perhaps the biggest hard-luck story belonged to Fourmaux. The Frenchman was sitting third at Friday’s midday service before an alternator issue struck before stage four. While attempting to repair the problem he damaged a water pipe as he replaced the fan, resulting in the M-Sport driver picking up a one-minute penalty for being six minutes late to stage four.

Incredibly, he managed to coax a stage-winning time out of his wounded Puma on stage six. Penalty aside he would have been 2.2s adrift of Evans’s lead.

"Many people have told me that I would not do the championship a favour if I won it not competing the whole season, so in that way it is positive"
Sebastien Ogier

“It is a shame the car let us down on Friday and we had a one-minute penalty but at the end I am pleased with what we have done on this rally” said Fourmaux, who went on to recover to fifth. 

Much of the talk heading into Chile had been about how the South American nation’s abrasive  roads were tyre killers, as evidenced by last year when Toyota’s tyre decision sensationally backfired. But while tyres were a factor on the event, it wasn’t wear that dominated the conversation. The weather had other ideas.

Friday’s sunshine was replaced by overnight rain and thick fog. Stages more to his liking and the curveball of wild weather was music to Rovanpera’s ears as he quickly overhauled Tanak on stage eight. 

That was the same stage where Ogier’s luck went from bad to worse and his hopes of a record-equalling ninth drivers’ title appeared to be over. The Toyota driver clipped a rock, which broke a bolt in his front suspension and forced him into a ditch 400 metres from the stage finish.

Fourmaux was left bemoaning car troubles that cost time on Friday

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

“Many people have told me that I would not do the championship a favour if I won it not competing the whole season, so in that way it is positive,” remarked Ogier. “At the end of the day I am a competitor and as long as the opportunity came up I tried to fight for it.”

Evans appeared to be relishing the stages and conditions that he felt were “reminiscent of Rally GB” and two stages wins moved his lead over Rovanpera out to 13.6s before thick fog and rain closed in. The fog was at its worst on the mountainous stage 11, reducing visibility to 20 metres, with Evans facing the worst of the conditions.

An unfortunate “double whammy” resulted in Evans conceding the lead to Rovanpera. Evans deployed his soft tyres, but couldn’t use them to their potential due to the poor visibility and duly dropped 24.1s.

“It [fog] is part of rallying; it is always a challenge,” reflected Evans. “For sure there were moments where it was on the edge in terms of overall event safety, but it is the way it is.”

Taking advantage of the soft tyres he’d saved for the final stage, which proved much wetter than anticipated, Rovanpera opened up a 15.1s margin over his team-mate and scored the 18 points on offer as Evans settled for 15 points. Tanak’s gamble for hard tyres backfired in the wet conditions, leaving the Estonian 33.6s adrift in third to earn 13 points at the end of Saturday.

“They say ‘no rain expected this evening’ – completely wrong information,” grumbled a frustrated Tanak. “Everything is difficult in this life, still you need to be on it.”

Tanak did score three more points than rival and championship leader Neuville, who performed an impressive damage limitation job to climb to fourth and pick up 10 points.

Thick fog and muddy conditions continued into Sunday’s four stages, before relenting for the Power Stage, but Rovanpera managed to hold his nerve to claim victory ahead of Evans, Tanak and Neuville. Rovanpera, who has more wins this year than his 2023 run to the title, almost added the icing on the cake with a trademark Power Stage triumph, only to be denied by the returning Ogier by. 0.129s. To add further gloss to Toyota’s 13 stage wins from 16, Ogier topped the Super Sunday classification from Rovanpera and Evans. 

Tanak was frustrated by "wrong information" on the weather conditions

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

“The Friday stages were really different compared to Saturday and Sunday, so I was expecting I could be a bit more comfortable,” explained Rovanpera. “Of course, the weather played a big part on that as we could take some bigger time gaps and really try to be fast in the difficult conditions.”

Hyundai has often led the way on Super Sundays this year but in Chile it was firmly on the back foot, compounded by Lappi’s retirement after stage 15. Damage incurred to the front of the i20 N ended the final WRC outing for Lappi’s retiring co-driver Janne Ferm prematurely.

“We knew that coming here would be a difficult rally with our drivers being one and two on the road and Esapekka lacking rhythm,” said Hyundai technical director Francois-Xavier Demaison, in place of the absent team principal Cyril Abiteboul. “I think we minimised the loss.”

"We have done what we needed but we need to make sure we get things [the title] done quickly as there is still a manufacturers’ championship to fight for"
Thierry Neuville

Chile proved there is plenty of life still in the title fights, with a rejuvenated Toyota now snapping at the heels of Hyundai, while Tanak reduced Neuville’s advantage in the title race from 34 to 29 points, applying pressure on the Belgian.

“We have done what we needed but we need to make sure we get things [the title] done quickly as there is still a manufacturers’ championship to fight for,” said Neuville.

Although its appears the championship is Neuville’s to lose, Tanak is not giving up just yet: “Obviously it is a very big gap but Thierry is not safe yet.”

Neuville has the title to lose, but the chasing pack led by Tanak are refusing to give up

Photo by: McKlein / Motorsport Images