Evans secures Rally Finland victory comfortably ahead of Neuville

Toyota’s Elfyn Evans has secured his second victory of the season with his comfortable victory over Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville in the World Rally Championship’s 2023 Rally Finland.  

Evans started off the final day of running with a healthy lead of 32.1 seconds over Neuville which made victory all but certain for the Welshman. However, this did not stop the Welsh dragon as he continued on to eke out a 38.2s advantage going into the Wolf Power Stage, Himos-Jämsä 2.

In a bid to cut down his deficit to – reigning world champion and teammate – Kalle Rovanpera, Evans left nothing on the table and took maximum points with the rally win (25pts) and the Wolf Power Stage victory (5pts). 

With four rounds remaining of the WRC’s 2023 campaign, the gap has shrunk between the two Toyota crews, in the driver’s standings, to 25 points. Rovanpera remains out ahead, following his retirement on Friday with 170 points but Evans’s win brings him up to 145 points.

After Neuville accepted second was going to be the best he could muster in his Hyundai i20 amid the Finnish forests, the Belgian set out on cementing that profitable position. Although Evans secured three wins over the four-stage day, as the opening stage win went to Toyota’s Takamoto Katsuta, the Belgian put in second-best times across the last three stages of the day. 

A second-place finish in Finland, and four points from the Wolf Power Stage, means Neuville has remained close to Evans in the standings and only 11 points separate the two. 

With the top two places pretty much secured ahead of the final day, it provided an all-out battle for Katsuta and Hyundai’s Finnish driver, Teemu Suninen. The fight for the final podium spot nearly met a premature end, in the second stage on Sunday, as Suninen had a moment on the first pass through Himos-Jämsä. 

The Finnish driver ran wide on the exit of a fast, downhill, left-hander and his rear-right tyre dropped below a bank in a search for solid ground. Thankfully, the #3 Hyundai managed to get all four wheels back onto the course and continue on. However, Katsuta never relinquished the podium place. 

In the end, Suninen had to settle for fourth place on home ground while Toyota occupied a 1-3 finish with Neuville in the middle. 

However, Suninen was not the only Finn outside the podium as Toyota’s fourth-car entry, piloted by Toyota’s team principal, Jari-Matti Latvala rounded out the WRC class in fifth place. The fifth-place finish, in the rally and the Wolf Power Stage, has propelled the former WRC driver into 11th place in the overall driver’s standings. 

Oliver Solberg may regret the fact he opted for Rally Finland to be a non-points-scoring round. The young Swede took put in the fastest time on the board of the WRC2 class to finish sixth in the overall standings. 

The young rally driver has two more point-scoring events, of a possible four, to select in his bid for WRC2 championship glory – and to get himself on the market for a potential return to the highest class.

Due to Solberg’s choice, this meant Sami Pajari took the victory in Finland with his seventh-place finish in the overall standings – first of the point-scoring WRC2 runners. Adrien Fourmaux and Nikolay Gryazin rounded out the WRC2 podium with their second and third-place finishes while Andreas Mikkelsen completed the top 10 in the overall standings.

Mikkelsen still remains the WRC2 drivers championship leader with 82 points but his gap has been reduced as Yohan Rossell and Pajari remain in close contention with 77 points and 71 points to their names, respectively. Solberg sits in fourth in the WRC2 championship with only 64 points to his tally, two points more than Gus Greensmith in fifth. 

The teams, drivers and rally fans will now have to wait until September to get the next hit of their WRC fix as the sport heads east, across the Mediterranean sea, into Greece for the EKO Acropolis Rally Greece on September 7-10,  for the 10th round of the season.

That’s all for the article; Evans secures Rally Finland victory comfortably ahead of Neuville!

Read more WRC here:

• Evans evades Neuville’s challenge after third day of WRC Rally Finland
• WRC: Rovanpera OUT of Rally Finland
• Evans snatches WRC Rally Finland lead as Rovanpera rolls out
• Disaster for M-Sport Ford as Tanak retires from Rally Finland
• Tanak fastest in WRC Rally Finland opener
• WRC 2023 Rally Finland: Preview

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Kamron Kent

Hi, I’m Kamron. I created ApexMotorsports.co.uk in the dying embers of the 2021 Formula 1 world championship. It allowed me freedom to write whatever I wanted to write about which was all things motorsports, my passion.

I have put a lot of effort in over the years to keep this website in its best shape and I’ve loved seeing the brand grow consistently, month-on-month, year-on-year. My ambition is to keep watching this brand grow into a primary outlet of news for all things motorsports whilst fueling my desire to pursue a career in sports journalism, specialising in motorsports.

Kamron Kent

Hi, I'm Kamron. I created ApexMotorsports.co.uk in the dying embers of the 2021 Formula 1 world championship. It allowed me freedom to write whatever I wanted to write about which was all things motorsports, my passion. I have put a lot of effort in over the years to keep this website in its best shape and I've loved seeing the brand grow consistently, month-on-month, year-on-year. My ambition is to keep watching this brand grow into a primary outlet of news for all things motorsports whilst fueling my desire to pursue a career in sports journalism, specialising in motorsports.