WRC, ERC and national rallying 2026Rally 

  • Thread starter Thread starter MagpieRacer
  • 548 comments
  • 486,744 views
Well done to the Scottish government, Motorsport UK and all concerned. While I'll always be gutted for what happened to Wales Rally GB I'm very happy that we have a UK round back.
 
This season goes from crazier to crazier.

Rally Croatia's new route saw the interesting challenge of tarmac roads flanked by gravelly edges, meaning some stages felt like gravel stages on a second pass, rather than just being a bit messy. This contributed to a few rally defining punctures and general chaos that decimated the 9-car Rally1 field.

Oliver Solberg crashed out less than 5km into the first stage after an innocuous slide hit the rock wall and sent him into a ditch. Elfyn Evans then uncharacteristically misheard a pacenote and flew off into the bushes at a tighter corner than he planned and was also out.

M-Sport has a miserable time with punctures, cockpit fires and Armstrong retiring on an early stage too.

Day 2 and Formaux retired due to a crash as well, while punctures for surprise rally leader Pajari, Katsuta, Paddon and M-Sport again made Neville the comfortable Rally leader.

Going into Sunday and Neville, Katsuta, Pajari and Paddon were the only Rally1 cars in the top 10 and ahead of the WRC2 cars. While the SuperRally crews sent it for Super Sunday and Power Stage points, the top 4 were too far apart due to number of punctures to really challenge each other and just had to (relatively) cruise to the end.

Hyundai, needing a win against the dominant Toyota's relied on their former champion, but cruelly on the final stage, Neville clipped a sign and broke his front suspension. After losing over 20 minutes scraping the damaged car to the finish, Neuville dropped out of the points, handing victory to a surprised Katsuta, his second win in two rallies.

Takamoto Katsuta is now the surprise Championship leader after the double disasters for Evans and Solberg in the last two rounds. Pajari scored another podium after his awful Monte Carlo Rally, and it was a first podium since 2018 for Hayden Paddon, doing his job well to at least pick up some silverware for the understandably distraught Hyundai team.

All this attention meant Lancia, who scored their first WRC2 win with the new Ypsilon, was an amazing 4th overall. Is this the best result for a WRC2 car? (Genuine question, anyone who knows please enlighten me). Either way, the biggest winners from this rally are Katsuta and Sebastien Ogier, who made this an event he skipped and didn't lose much to his main title rivals. Has Katsuta joined that list of rivals now? We will find out in the Canary Islands in 2 weeks time.
 
Delighted for Sami to win in Estonia, he's going to be dangerous this weekend. Could be a 5 way title fight.
 
WRC secures new promoter to secure the future of the WRC and ERC, fronted by former Renault, Lotus and Mclaren F1 team principal, Eric Boullier.

 
Crazy day 2 in Finland as rain halfway through a stage ruins the later runners, absolutely destroying Formaux's podium chances while Evans profited most. Makes this an interesting championship dice and a rare opportunity for Evans to have a go at two days of a gravel Rally in a good road position.

It's looking more like Evans' championship to lose, as this was his biggest weakness last year. Just bring it home on the podium Elfyn!
 


Ogier and Ingrassia exited the car unassisted and have gone to hospital for checks. Huge crash.
 
Evans rolled 3 times earlier in the day, about 3 corners away from the finish of the morning loop. The craziest thing though was that he landed on his wheels, and the only major time loss was because it got stuck in a ditch and had to be manhandled out. I time it as 1:38 lost by getting stuck compared to rejoining nicely. Evans starts the final day 1:36 behind Pajari... He could genuinely have gone into the final day leading despite that crash based on the pace.

Still, the even crazier part is in this video, the man who opens the door at 1:27 in the video is Gwyndaf Evans, Elfyn's Dad!

 
Jimlaad43
Evans rolled 3 times earlier in the day, about 3 corners away from the finish of the morning loop. The craziest thing though was that he landed on his wheels, and the only major time loss was because it got stuck in a ditch and had to be manhandled out. I time it as 1:38 lost by getting stuck compared to rejoining nicely. Evans starts the final day 1:36 behind Pajari... He could genuinely have gone into the final day leading despite that crash based on the pace.

Still, the even crazier part is in this video, the man who opens the door at 1:27 in the video is Gwyndaf Evans, Elfyn's Dad!

Click to expand...

Echoes of McRae rolling his Legacy in a very similar manner back in 1992.

Mad that Gwyndaf was just there.

Also, what an unbelievable service effort on Martins Sesks car, from an absolute write off to showroom fresh with 6 minutes spare.
 
Last edited:
Back