Rally Islas Canaries Recap
- therookiereporters
- Apr 28
- 2 min read
The 23-26 April the world rally championship hosted its 5th round of the season. Here is everything that went down.
Stage 1 began in a stadium with the layout giving an ode to the race of champions. It gave spectators a chance to get close to the action. Katsuta took the lead by 0.4 seconds, after a thrilling stage 1. Toyota took the lead to end the first day of action and head into Friday.
Friday started off with stage 2, Ogier won this stage and then took the lead of the overall timings by 0.8s after Katsuta finished 5th. Unfortunately stage 3 was then cancelled due to fans not respecting Marshall’s orders meaning it became unsafe for the rally to run.
After an action packed five more stages, Friday ended with Toyota still on top as manufacturer, however Ogier was now top of the overall standings by 8.9 seconds, setting a dominant display and a tone for the rest of the stages. A few mistakes Katsuta ended the day in 5th, a stark difference to Thursday.
Saturday began with stage 9 where Evans was fastest overall by 0.1 seconds, giving him a strong start to the day and a dominant display for fans to enjoy. The current standings leader came in third to keep himself top of the timings. By the end of the day and end of stage 14, fans had seen Solberg and Evans trading wins and both giving dominant displays. However it ended with Ogier keeping his place at the top of the standings by 3.8 seconds. Solberg followed in second with Evans coming in third.
Sunday began with Stage 15 where Solberg took the win again, and then took the win again in Stage 16. This put him second in the standings heading into the final stages. Going into Stage 17, the fight for the lead was close between Ogier and Solberg, however Solberg drifted off track which resulted in a DNF for him. Evans moved to second from this, he then took the win in stage 18 and put himself 19.9 seconds behind.
The final top 8 were
1. Sebastien Ogier
2. Elfyn Evans
3. Sami Pajari
4. Takamoto Katsuta
5. Adrien Fourmaux
6. Thierry Neuville
7. Dani Sordo
8. Josh McErlean
This gives Evans the championship lead following the conclusion of the fifth round. Toyota also became the ones to watch with a top four lock out for the manufacturer. But will they continue this dominance in Portugal?
Article written by Imogen Moggridge © Imogen Moggridge 2026
