This weekend's Rally del Paraguay is crucial in this year's title race with all four contenders present
Photography by Toyota, Red Bull & Škoda
Words by Luke Barry
With all of this year’s major players scoring points, this week’s Rally del Paraguay will be key in deciding who ends 2025 as the WRC2 champion.
Oliver Solberg (Toyota) currently leads the championship by three points over Yohan Rossel (Citroën). Gus Greensmith is fourth (Škoda) while Nikolay Gryazin (Škoda) is still a contender, despite currently being all the way down in 22nd.
Solberg is the favorite, but as it stands both Greensmith and Gryazin have a higher points potential than the Swede. However that doesn’t necessarily mean they will outscore him.
Any championship that includes a dropped score can be difficult to keep track of, but we’ve outlined the basic permutations for you below.
Rossel, Greensmith and Gryazin all travelling to Paraguay and Chile is fantastic news for Solberg. Yes, it means he’ll need to fight incredibly hard to win either, or both, events, but it gives him the chance to wrap up the title three rounds early as he can limit his rivals’ points potential.
Solberg currently has three wins, so if he’s victorious in both Paraguay and Chile he’ll have amassed five wins. His sixth and final score would be his fifth place from Safari, but in that scenario the best points total anyone else could manage would be Greensmith on 129 (six points shy of Solberg).
Intriguingly, the same is true of Rossel. While the Frenchman’s maximum possible total is lower than Solberg, if he wins the next two rallies he’ll limit Solberg’s season score to a maximum of 121. And those two victories would give Rossel 132, which is three points clear of Greensmith’s best-case scenario in that instance.
There is no possibility for either driver to claim the WRC2 title this weekend in Paraguay.
Rossel, like Solberg, can claim the championship title in two weeks
Greensmith cannot win the championship in South America, but can effectively eliminate Solberg and Rossel from his radar if he wins both of the next two rallies.
The Briton has yet to finish off the podium at the events he’s nominated for points (Safari, Portugal and Greece), which gives him the luxury of being able to drop a bad result still – Solberg, Rossel and Gryazin have all used up their dropped score already.
But any title win requires Greensmith to realistically beat Solberg in both Paraguay and Chile, and the only event he’s done that so far in 2025 was Safari – where Solberg was leading before he got stuck in fech-fech as the first Rally2 car on the road.
Earlier in the season while Solberg, Rossel and Greensmith were doing battle, Gryazin was biding his time – saving his points-scoring rounds for the back end of the season. It’s a shrewd tactic, but may have worked against him as he’ll be up against Solberg and Rossel twice, and Greensmith four times, in the next five events.
Greensmith has the highest points potential of any driver prior to Paraguay
Gryazin’s non-score in Estonia was damaging to his championship as he lost the safety net of a dropped score, and he’s also yet to claim a victory. Failing to correct that in either Paraguay or Chile (and assuming Solberg or Rossel don’t win both and end the contest anyway) would massively apply the pressure for Central Europe, Japan and Saudi Arabia.
Everybody will be concentrating on beating Solberg, but Gryazin really needs to make sure he’s at least ahead of Greensmith as those two will be battling each other for 80% of the remainder of Gryazin’s campaign. However he also has full control over his own destiny, as he can win the title if he wins all five of the final rounds.
This weekend’s result will be massively important, and will provide a better idea of where everything stands.
Ultimately, we cannot predict how events are going to unfold and which other drivers may become factors in the equation due to their individual event performances.
But the simple fact is this: all four contenders want, and need, to win in Paraguay. Let battle commence.
Words:Luke Barry
Tags: Gus Greensmith, Nikolay Gryazin, Oliver Solberg, Rally del Paraguay, Rally del Paraguay 2025, WRC2, WRC2 2025, Yohan Rossel
Publish Date August 28, 2025 DirtFish
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