Elfyn Evans has thrown down the gauntlet to his World Rally Championship title rivals.
The Toyota driver survived an intense Rally Sweden pressure cooker to deliver a statement victory, denying team-mate Takamoto Katsuta what would have been an emotional maiden WRC triumph in dramatic circumstances.
Evans’ 10th WRC win, to tie with WRC champions Richard Burns (2001) and Ari Vatanen (1981), will be remembered as one of his finest after holding his nerve through a hotly contested five-way fight for the win that included six lead changes. Evans had to stay cool under immense pressure to wrestle the lead back from Katsuta on the penultimate stage as the Japanese appeared to be within touching distance of his maiden triumph. In the end, Evans and co-driver Scott Martin took the spoils by 3.8 seconds from Katsuta, with Hyundai’s defending world champion Thierry Neuville in third, 11.9s adrift.
Not only was this a fine victory for Evans, he claimed a maximum 35 points by pipping Katsuta to the Sunday classification by 0.8s and the Power Stage by 0.1s.
“Very good start, very early days [in the championship] but I don’t think you could wish for much better than this,” said Evans, who leads the standing by 28 points from part-time team-mate Sebastien Ogier.
Few would have predicted a relentless victory scrap, that ended with only 16.8s separating the top four, but that was what unfolded across 293.84 kilometres of Sweden’s breathtakingly fast snow and ice covered stages.
However, Evans’ strong showing was not a complete surprise. The Welshman admitted after winning last year’s Japan season finale that his 2024 campaign fell below his own high standards, but in Monte Carlo in January it seemed a rejuvenated and somewhat different Evans had rocked up. This translated to the stages as the Welshman displayed he had fire in the belly by successfully fending off Adrien Fourmaux to finish second in Monte Carlo. Once again this grit, determination and fight was on full display in Sweden.
Opening the road is usually a massive disadvantage in Sweden but it proved to be “not a disaster” as Evans predicted. Conditions were near perfect, not a great deal of fresh snow to sweep, complemented by a hard ice base for the studded tyres to dig into. In fact the only unknown was just how the new Hankook snow tyre would perform. The verdict ultimately being that the South Korean firm has produced a hugely reliable tyre but one that requires finessing to achieve ultimate pace.
Evans led from the outset but this rally was a high-speed game of chess on ice, where the slightest mistake was punished severely. Evans ended Friday’s opening loop with a 1.9s lead over Fourmaux with Hyundai’s Ott Tanak and Katsuta in hot pursuit, covered by 8.4s.
The second pass of stages really tested Evans’ resolve, starting first on the road on rutted stages, and it was here where the lead changed hands. Across three stages Katsuta, Evans and Tanak briefly held top spot before Evans came back to the fore to end the day with a slender 0.8s advantage. The lead swapping was reminiscent of the great Petter Solberg versus Marcus Gronholm Rally Sweden epic 20 years ago.
“It was a very consistent and strong weekend and probably my best performance in my career but, at the same time, I have a very mixed feeling” Takamoto Katsuta
Evans’ advantage was cut to 0.1s at the start of Saturday as Katsuta emerged as the Welshman’s closest rival, although you could throw a blanket over the top four. The lead grew to 8.6s before Evans brushed a snowbank in stage 14 and then stalled at a tight left-hander in stage 15, which reduced the lead to three seconds. Hyundai’s Neuville climbed to third, 6.3s back, after finding solutions to the understeer issue that had blighted the start of his rally. Tanak sat lurking in fourth, 12.8s behind after a Saturday that left the Estonian frustrated by a coolant leak and a suspected mechanical issue on his i20 N that forced him to run a sub-optimal engine map.
With three Sunday stages remaining, a grandstand finish was set. Evans was the favourite but Katsuta appeared more than capable of finally taking that elusive win. For Toyota, it created a nervous and tense climax. Team principal Jari-Matti Latvala even hinted about deploying some kind of strategy with its drivers. But Toyota stuck to its firm no team orders approach and a fair fight ensued.
The prospect of a first-time winner seemed genuine as Katsuta delivered a stunning drive on stage 16, taking 7.5s out of Evans to move into a 4.5s lead with two tests remaining. But Evans was not to be denied and summoned one of the best performances of his career to snatch the lead back on stage 17 to the tune of 3.7s, before going to win the Power Stage showdown to take a second career Sweden triumph.
“I can’t really believe it has turned out quite the way it did,” said a stunned Evans. “It was looking fairly bleak after the first stage in the morning and I thought I was going backwards, but in the end we managed to turn things around and a maximum haul on a Sunday is always good as well.”
Evans triumph ultimately meant heartbreak for Katsuta, a driver that has become a WRC fan favourite and much loved member of the service park, with many desperate for him to break his duck. This was a breakthrough moment for a driver who 12 months ago was in tears after a crash into a snowbank let slip a shot at Rally Sweden glory. That moment was part of a string of disappointments for Katsuta during a horrible 2024 that included Toyota benching him for the visit to Chile. But Katsuta is most definitely back to his best and knocking on the door, as Latvala affirmed, stating his driver is now ”ready to win” rallies.
“It was a very consistent and strong weekend and probably my best performance in my career but, at the same time, I have a very mixed feeling - 50% is happy that I have done the job for the team, but I’m disappointed in myself that I was not able to push in the second-last one,” said Katsuta.
“But I decided to do it to make sure I finished the rally. I believe this was the right decision but in the end this cost us too much as Elfyn did an amazing time. I’m hoping this decision was not wrong and it [the win] will come.”
Hyundai brought its highly anticipated evolution of its i20 N to Sweden featuring upgrades to the suspension. Ultimately it had to witness a second consecutive Toyota 1-2 but the team is hopeful its labour will begin to bear fruit in the coming rounds.
“We have done a good rally, there were some ups and downs but we can be pleased with our performance,” said Neuville.
While Tanak added: “When you come with high hopes and you get a rally like this, it is difficult to swallow.”
What happened to Rovanpera?
The fight for the victory missed one huge name everyone expected to be at the forefront. This was the event seemingly everyone was anticipating a response from Kalle Rovanpera after salvaging fourth from a difficult Monte Carlo, where he admitted that he needed to change his driving style to adapt to Hankook’s new slick tyre.
Now back on an event he enjoys, the scene was set for Rovanpera to ignite the afterburners. But it appears adjusting to the new Hankook rubber is going to be a challenge for the Finn, who foreshadowed a difficult rally before a wheel had been turned.
Rovanpera unusually struggled for confidence and found himself fighting his GR Yaris, with understeer at the centre of this battle. Not being able to trust the car on such a high-speed rally was always going to be costly.
“A lot of points for the team and good fight between team-mates at least they did the job, we didn’t” Kalle Rovanpera
“I don’t get to drive the car how I want - I can feel quite clearly that I need to fight against the car all the time and I think it [the tyre, himself and the car] has all combined together,” said Rovanpera on Friday. “It is not smooth the driving everywhere I need to do some extra stuff and I’m fighting against understeer a lot so it is not very good.”
The Finn did set a fastest time on stage nine while making gradual progress with the set-up and his driving style.
“A lot of points for the team and good fight between team-mates at least they did the job, we didn’t,” said Rovanpera. “I think it is just a different approach this year with all the new things. I don’t know [what it will take to get back to his best] but let’s see on gravel.”
Rovanpera was, however, hugely proud of the performance from close friend Katsuta, admitting he was probably more “nervous” than him before the final stage showdown.
Fourmaux falters after strong start
The fifth driver locked in the victory battle across Friday was Hyundai’s Fourmaux. Buoyed by his third place finish in Monte Carlo, Hyundai’s new signing ran as high as second before ending Friday in fourth, firmly in the fight, 7.9s adrift of leader Evans.
Come Saturday the Frenchman’s rally unravelled in unusual circumstances. Fourmaux appeared to not be ready for the start of stage 11 and then had to stop shortly after the startline to tighten his helmet strap and belts, costing him 23.6s. Fourmaux admitted ultimately it was his error, but at the time felt that the marshals should have notified him that his start time was fast approaching.
“It was really messy,” he said. “This kind of thing shouldn’t happen, we have marshals who are there to check if we have got everything and the marshal was there, but they didn’t say anything. It is my responsibility but there were no belts [on], no gloves, nothing and I should have checked the time, but [co-driver] Alex [Coria] told me [we had] 10 seconds to go.”
Attempting to recover the lost time, Fourmaux won stage 12 but then crashed into a snowbank on the following test. A solitary point from Sunday’s Power Stage was all he could salvage but he assured his helmet strap issue “will not happen again” in future.
Fourmaux’s demise shuffled the leaderboard with M-Sport-Ford’s Martins Sesks, making his first of six starts this year, leading the Blue Oval charge. The Latvian clocked the second fastest time in shakedown and, while he couldn’t repeat such heights, a string of solid stages times earned the 25-year-old a commendable sixth.
Sesks managed to fend off his old Junior WRC rival Sami Pajari, who was in recovery mode after stage two, where he dropped 41.6s when a small nudge of a snowbank popped a tyre off the rim.
M-Sport-Ford’s full-timers Gregoire Munster and Josh McErlean endured a challenging weekend. Munster initially struggled for speed from the outset and was largely outpaced by rookie McErlean. Munster did improve as the rally progressed to finish eighth after McErlean’s Ford Puma found a snowbank in stage 16.
In contrast to the battle for the outright victory, the fight in the WRC2 was a one-sided affair. Championship favourites Oliver Solberg and Elliott Edmondson led from start to finish taking their third Sweden win in a row, by 42.5s from the fellow Toyota of Finn Roope Korhonen.
“It is a fantastic relief, amazing - to win it three years in a row and with a new car being on pace and so fast and winning on snow is an incredible feeling,” said Solberg, who finished ninth overall.
However, what Rally Sweden quite clearly showcased is the fight for the 2025 World Rally Championship is wide open and there could be a new name on the overall rally winner board soon.
