Evans Finally Gets His Crown: The 2026 WRC Season in Review
Elfyn Evans won the 2026 World Rally Championship in a Sardinian thriller, and next year's new cars and trips to Scotland and the USA could shake things up even more.
Evans finally gets his crown:
Elfyn Evans is a World Champion at last. After years of coming close, the Welshman finally clinched the 2026 World Rally Championship in a finale that went right down to the final corners of the season. He and co-driver Scott Martin sealed it at Rally Italia Sardegna, where Toyota teammates Oliver Solberg and Elliott Edmondson won the rally itself. The title was decided when Solberg crashed two corners from the end of the Power Stage and Evans became Britain's first world rally champion since Richard Burns in 2001.
Toyota ruled again, but nobody ran away with it:
Toyota were always going to be the team to beat coming into 2026 and they proved it across the course of the season. The winners kept changing, though. Solberg won Monte Carlo in the opening round of his first full season in the top class, then Evans took Rally Sweden as Toyota finished first, second, third and fourth.
Kenya turned things upside down. All three Toyota crews who could score points retired on the Saturday and Takamoto Katsuta still picked up his first ever WRC win. He won again in Croatia after Thierry Neuville crashed on the very last stage while leading. Hyundai finally got their moment in Portugal, where Neuville and co-driver Martijn Wydaeghe won after Solberg lost the lead to a late puncture. Sébastien Ogier then added wins in the Canary Islands and Greece.
The Sami Pajari show:
The breakout star of the year was Finland's Sami Pajari. He won in Estonia, won again on home roads in Finland and made it three in a row in Paraguay. No crew had ever taken their first three top-level wins back to back before. That run kept him in the title fight all the way to Sardinia.
Evans The Survivor:
Evans only won in Sweden and Japan but he led the standings for most of the season. He got through a couple of nasty late punctures, in Chile and then again in Sardinia, and kept scoring when others slipped up. Toyota also locked up the manufacturers' title early. It was their sixth in a row, which puts them level in the history books with Lancia on ten world titles.
The end of Rally1 (sort of):
Sardinia was also the last rally for the current generation of cars. From 2027, the top cars will use engines, suspension, running gear and brakes from Rally2, with a planned cost cap of €345,000 and around 300 horsepower. Safety is meant to be at least as good as in today's cars.
The Rally1 name is sticking around, though. Toyota's all-new car and M-Sport's Ford Fiesta with extra aero will both be called Rally1, and Rally2 cars with a €7,500 update kit can join in too. To keep the two apart, the FIA wants to give the new cars a turbo restrictor advantage, and that vote is due on the 15th of October. Two new tuner teams, Project Rally One and RMC Motorsport, are joining Toyota. However, Hyundai's future is the big question mark because they won't build a new top-class car for 2027 and a works Rally2 effort is only a maybe.
America and Scotland join the party:
The 2027 calendar has 15 rounds, the most since 2008. The USA is back for the first time since 1988 from 26 to 29 August, with a new gravel rally based around Knoxville, using roads in Tennessee and Kentucky. Scotland follows from 30 September to 3 October, bringing the WRC back to the UK for the first time since 2019 on a three-year deal. Italy also moves to the asphalt roads around Rome in July. Kenya keeps its March slot after worries it could drop off the calendar, while Portugal misses out for now but could return in 2028. The season starts in Monte Carlo in January and ends in Saudi Arabia in November.
What it all means:
2026 proved that even the best drivers can have a bad day on any stage. Punctures, rolls and Power Stage mistakes decided rallies and swung the championship, and Evans clinched the title for being the one who kept consistent. With new cars, new rivals and rallies in Scotland and the USA, 2027 could be even harder to predict.
Article written by Ayaan Rahman
