The 2025 WRC title battle is shaping up nicely, with Rally Finland shaking things up yet again
Photography by Toyota & Hyundai
Words by Luke Barry
It’s Toyota’s world, and we’re just living in it.
The team just cannot stop making history at the minute. An eighth win from nine events in 2025 puts it just one short of Citroën in history after a top-five lockout in the city the squad is based.
And that man Kalle Rovanperä finally ended his, and Finland’s, long, long wait for a homegrown winner again.
Yet it was the third-placed Toyota that we arguably learned the most from at Rally Finland 2025.
In a repeat of what happened last year, Sébastien Ogier has invited himself to the party – fighting for this year’s world championship.
It was rather telling how unsurprised his rivals were that this decision had been reached. It’s not a massive shocker, if we’re honest.
But it adds yet another dimension to what’s bubbling into a classic WRC title fight.
Ogier’s yet to finish off the podium this year but when he committed full-time 12 months ago, it all went pear-shaped.
Can he prevent lightning from striking twice?
What you will always, always get with Thierry Neuville is tenacity. But even the most tenacious characters recognize when the writing is on the wall.
With 175 points still up for grabs and a 51-point deficit, the math clearly hasn’t ruled Neuville out from retaining his #1 door card.
However, probability suggests it would take a rather big upset for him to pull it off from here.
The travesty is Neuville was driving an epic Rally Finland. Not as fast as Rovanperä (who was?) but on an event he’s not the happiest at, he was second before a puncture relegated him to sixth.
That night Neuville declared his title defense was basically over. Let’s see if driving with less pressure and more freedom than the rest will switch things up in the season’s final phase.
In 2020 there was no rally; 2021, a crossed-up moment that sent him towards a pile of stones. Two years ago he crashed out of the lead; and last year, an unavoidable rock devastatingly cost him a certain win on the penultimate stage.
The one year he did quite well, Ott Tänak drove out of his skin to beat him. A home win kept on eluding Finland’s fresh superstar.
Hope wasn’t high for Rovanperä redemption given his recent WRC form, but as he put it: “I feel like it was finally time to get it.”
Of wider significance, however, is what this means for Rovanperä’s title chances. With just three points as a deficit to Elfyn Evans, he’s never been closer.
And unlike after Canaries where he last won this year, and cautioned not to expect the same in Portugal, Finland had the feeling of a corner being turned. Paraguay will be the ultimate proof.
What made Elfyn Evans’ title challenges possible in the World Rally Car era (2020 and ’21) was, above all else, his consistency.
That trait has become a weaker part of his game in the Rally1 times, but what’s clear after Finland is it’s likely Evans’ strongest weapon this year if he’s to become a world champion.
While the swashbuckling peaks of Monte Carlo, Sweden and Safari are becoming an increasingly distant memory, Evans has continued to scoop up points – even on his bad days. Only once this season (Portugal) has his final points tally from an event not been in double digits.
Ott Tänak is the best point of comparison. In strong form, leading the championship and one of the clear favorites to win at the weekend, his Rally Finland could not have been any worse if he tried. He walked away with just one point.
Through all the twists and turns of this increasingly intriguing contest, Evans has always been near, or at, the top of the table. Marry that to similar speed to what we saw at the start of the year, and Wales will be celebrating in a matter of months.
Oliver Solberg’s ‘man of the moment’ status has evaporated after what became a forgettable weekend in Finland.
Back to reality in WRC2 after the extreme high of his one-off Rally1 chance, and victory, in Estonia, Solberg was effectively in a no-win situation last week. In the end, that became the case literally, not just metaphorically.
A crash on Friday left him without an opportunity to score points, which then became even more complicated when his wipers failed in the rain. It all left Solberg with the impression that he was underprepared for the weekend, having been so absorbed in his late call to drive a Rally1.
Not ideal, but he wouldn’t have things any other way, particularly as Solberg remains the WRC2 title favorite with three wins from five starts. The next trip to Paraguay, where he’ll be up against big rivals Gus Greensmith and Yohan Rossel, will be critical for the outcome of the championship.
Comparing Sami Pajari to Oliver Solberg was somewhat inevitable after the Swede rocked up, dominated Rally Estonia, and then headed back to Rally2.
Pajari – who beat Solberg to last year’s WRC2 title – hasn’t hit anywhere near the same highs in 2025, although is on a very different program with a clear instruction to gain experience.
In Finland, though, he sent a decent reminder of what he can be capable of – quadrupling his number of career stage wins (one to four) over the course of the rally and consistently fighting at the front. Pajari was never seriously at risk just because of one Solberg performance, but it wasn’t the worst time he could’ve chosen to bang in a strong showing.
All of his WRC stage wins to date have been in Finland, however, so it would be nice to see the Finn produce a similar level of performance elsewhere. Paraguay could be a good opportunity given it’s a brand-new rally for everyone, but will he be let loose or asked to rein it in?
Jari-Matti Latvala’s passion to drive a rally car is as obvious as the dominance of the team he works in the WRC.
But now at 40 years old, over five years on from his professional driving career coming to a close, could he still fight with the very best?
Yes.
To be honest, we knew that before Rally Finland 2025 anyway. But the level at which he performed on the weekend is what really stood out.
J-ML’s done Finland for the past three years (once in a Rally1 car, twice now in a Rally2) and this was clearly his most competitive of the three in terms of pure performance. It would seem his campaign in the European Historic Rally Championship did him no harm at all in staying sharp!
In the end, Latvala had to settle for second in WRC2 (by just 1.1 seconds) but he proved something, perhaps mostly to himself: that he can still fight at the very front.
Fair play to Roope Korhonen, though. You could argue a Finn winning in Finland is barely even news, but this was a mega drive to resist Latvala’s pressure and deliver the first of surely many victories in WRC2.
Words:Luke Barry
Tags: Rally Finland, Rally Finland 2025, What we learned, WRC, WRC 2025
Publish Date August 4, 2025 DirtFish
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