What a season. The 2026 World Rally Championship title fight shifted shape over and over again, leaving Elfyn Evans, Oliver Solberg and Sami Pajari arriving in Sardinia with everything on the line and only six points separating first from third in the end.
Oliver Solberg made an absolute statement right out of the gate in his first full Rally1 campaign by winning Rallye Monte-Carlo alongside co-driver Elliott Edmondson for Toyota Gazoo Racing, with Evans taking second in a Toyota podium lockout. Evans answered back immediately in Sweden by leading home a Toyota 1-2-3-4 ahead of Takamoto Katsuta, Pajari, and Solberg to take the championship lead. The opening months were wonderfully chaotic. Both Evans and Solberg hit trouble in Kenya, where Katsuta scored his maiden WRC win and Pajari took third, before Croatia threw more drama into the mix. Evans and Solberg went off on Friday, leaving Pajari to claim second after Thierry Neuville crashed out of the lead on the Wolf Power Stage. Katsuta led the standings briefly, but Sébastien Ogier won in the Canary Islands after a fierce fight with Solberg, who crashed with two stages left. That put Evans back on top, and he simply refused to budge from the championship lead for the rest of the year.
The second half of the calendar tore the script to shreds. Sami Pajari delivered a stunning breakthrough in Estonia, leading start to finish, winning 12 stages, and beating Solberg by 19.5sec to take his maiden WRC victory. Then the young Finn did it again on home soil in Finland. Arriving in Paraguay, Pajari and co-driver Marko Salminen secured a third consecutive victory, entering the record books as the first crew whose maiden three wins came back-to-back-to-back. Evans finished fourth after admitting his approach was too conservative, while Solberg suffered an engine stop on Friday while leading, though he still fought back to win the Wolf Power Stage. Chile brought Solberg right back into the mix as he mastered the conditions for his second win of the season, while Evans suffered a damaged front-left tyre on the penultimate stage and dropped to fifth. Suddenly, Evans led on 230 points, Pajari had 213, and Solberg sat on 209.
Then came the ultimate twist before the cars even hit the stages in Italy, with the cancellation of Rally Saudi Arabia making Sardinia the 13th and final round of the season. Evans held a 17-point advantage over Pajari and 21 over Solberg, with 35 points still on the table. Solberg immediately went to work, winning Thursday's Ittiri Arena Show and fighting back to third by Friday night despite tyre damage. Saturday morning transformed the contest entirely as Solberg won SS9 and SS10 to take the rally lead, slashing Evans' provisional championship cushion down to just four points. By Saturday night, Solberg led the rally, Pajari held third, and Evans was fifth.
Sunday delivered one final, heart-stopping swing. Evans suffered a puncture on SS16, forcing a wheel change that kept him fifth overall but wiped out any hope of scoring Super Sunday points, leaving the title battle resting squarely on the Wolf Power Stage. Evans completed his run to score three points. Solberg started the final stage needing to beat his teammate's time, and he was up on the splits as the finish approached. But then, agony struck just two corners from the end as Solberg went off. He recovered to reach the finish and preserve his Rally Italia Sardegna victory, but the lost Wolf Power Stage points meant the incredible championship turnaround slipped through his fingers.
Elfyn Evans and co-driver Scott Martin were world champions. The final standings showed just how fine the margins were after thousands of competitive kilometres: Evans finished on 243 points, Solberg on 238, and Pajari on 237 after a sensational mid-season hat-trick. Solberg ended his stellar first full Rally1 campaign as championship runner-up and a three-time WRC winner, while Evans finally converted relentless consistency into the title he had chased for so long.
