How the WRC title race was ignited by Evans in Finland

Kalle Rovanpera’s first mistake in the 2023 World Rally Championship campaign has opened the door to his title rivals, with Toyota team-mate Elfyn Evans taking advantage with his own dominant display at Rally Finland. With four rounds to go this season, is the title fight back on?

Updated Aug 8, 2023, 11:49 AM

Two years ago, Elfyn Evans joined an exclusive club of eight drivers heralding from outside the Nordic nations to have conquered the revered Rally Finland. Last weekend, the Welsh Toyota star proved that was no fluke as he ignited his World Rally Championship title aspirations with a dominant victory to sit alongside Finnish rallying royalty Ari Vatanen and Timo Salonen as two-time winners of the event.

After reigning world champion and points leader Kalle Rovanpera had delivered a Sebastien Loeb-like domination in Rally Estonia a fortnight before the ‘Grand Prix on Gravel’, the script seemed set, and maybe the title race, over. Surely Finland’s first world champion for 20 years would end a six-year wait for a home-grown Rally Finland winner and take another step in his WRC title defence…

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Author Tom Howard

Tom Howard is a News Editor working across both Autosport.com and Motorsport.com websites. Starting out as a sports reporter in local newspapers, Tom focussed on motorsport covering several national championships in the UK, including the BTCC.

After a period working as a freelance journalist, Tom moved to Australia in 2013 landing a job at leading Australian motorsport news outlet speedcafe.com, covering international motorsport events including F1, WRC and Supercars. Progressing to Editor in 2017, Tom was named Motorsport Australia Journalist of the Year for his work. He is also a two-time winner of Supercars Journalist of The Year (2017,2019) and a Supercars Championship Media Award winner in 2019.

Tom moved back to his native UK in 2020, firstly working in BTCC, before joining Autosport and motorsport.com in 2021.