WRC Rally Italia Sardegna 2026: conor edwards
WRC Rally Italia Sardegna
Oliver Solberg arrived in Sardinia 21 points behind teammate Elfyn Evans, knowing that only an almost perfect weekend would keep his title hopes alive. He immediately made his intentions clear by setting the fastest time on the opening spectator stage beating nine-time world champion Sébastien Ogier by 0.8 seconds. The real damage, however, came on Friday. Solberg overcame tyre trouble on the opening gravel stage to win SS4 and then continued to apply pressure throughout the day. While Evans struggled with the disadvantage of running first on the road, Solberg exploited his later starting position to climb the leaderboard.
By the end of Friday, he had established himself as the leading championship contender on the road, sitting third overall but 27.9 seconds ahead of Sami Pajari and a huge 56.6 seconds clear of Evans. Thierry Neuville led overnight after a fiercely contested opening day, with Hyundai team-mate Adrien Fourmaux only 0.4 seconds behind.
Saturday
Solberg won SS9 and SS10 to erase Neuville’s 12.3-second advantage and take the rally lead before midday. Then Neuville’s rally unravelled on the afternoon loop. The Hyundai driver went off just 1.1 kilometres into SS11, bringing an abrupt end to his victory challenge and transforming the rally. Solberg inherited a lead of more than half a minute, while Ogier moved into second and Fourmaux took third. For Solberg, the focus shifted from attack to control. He had done enough to put himself in an extraordinary position. Victory in Sardinia was within reach for Solberg, and the championship suddenly looked like his to lose. Elfyn Evans wasn’t giving up without a fight having survived the increasingly treacherous stages and continued to collect valuable points. By Saturday evening, the title battle had effectively become a straight fight between the two Toyota drivers.
Solberg led the rally by 33.6 seconds from Ogier, with Pajari third and Evans fifth. If the positions remained unchanged, Solberg would score 25 rally points while Evans would collect 10, leaving the Swede needing only to gain enough bonus points on Sunday to draw level, when the number of rally wins would go in Solberg’s favour to clinch the Driver’s title.
Sunday
Evans suffered a front-right puncture on the Osilo–Tergu test, his second costly penultimate stage puncture in as many rallies after a similar setback in Chile. The incident removed his Super Sunday points and left the championship hanging on the final 7.10-kilometre Sassari–Argentiera Wolf Power Stage. The margins were tiny. Evans completed his run first, setting the benchmark. Solberg then attacked, knowing exactly what he needed to do. With just over a kilometre remaining, Solberg was 1.9 seconds faster than Evans. The title appeared to be slipping away from the Welshman. Then, with only a handful of corners remaining, Solberg slid wide and went off into the sand. He managed to recover and complete the stage, but the lost time was enough. Evans and Martin were world champions.
Solberg had dominated the rally, winning it by 57.6 seconds from Ogier and Vincent Landais, with Sami Pajari and Marko Salminen completing an all-Toyota podium. For Evans, the achievement represents the culmination of years of near misses. His 2026 campaign once again demanded extraordinary resilience. He led the championship for much of the season, only for his advantage to erode during the second half as his rivals closed in and Evans struggled to gain an advantage running at the head of the field on the gravel events. Sardinia appeared to compound those problems. Road-cleaning duties put him on the back foot, while Solberg’s later road position allowed the Swede to attack the loose gravel with greater confidence.
By Saturday, Evans’ advantage had been reduced to just six points. But Evans never stopped fighting. Alongside Martin, he concentrated on his own rally and seemingly managing to ignore what was going on around him, keeping himself within reach of the championship despite the setbacks, and when Solberg finally made the mistake that mattered, the Toyota crew was there to capitalise.
Solberg leaves Sardinia with the rally victory, but also with the painful knowledge that the world title was within his grasp until the final corners. Evans leaves as champion. After five championship runner-up finishes and two previous seasons in which he arrived at the finale as the points leader, the Welshman finally has the prize he had spent so long chasing.
The Rally1 era reached its conclusion on the gravel roads of Sardinia, bringing the curtain down on one of the most technically ambitious chapters in World Rally Championship history. Introduced in 2022, Rally1 cars brought hybrid power (temporarily), sophisticated aerodynamics and a new generation of regulations designed to make the WRC’s premier machinery safer and more cost-effective. Toyota, Hyundai and M-Sport Ford battled through four seasons of intense competition with Sardinia providing an appropriately dramatic farewell.
