Taylor Gill's last-gasp JWRC championship defeat to Mille Johansson echoes a similar situation from 14 years ago
Photography by M-Sport & Girardo & Co. Archive
Words by Luke Barry
All of the work leading up to that point may as well not have happened. Nothing else mattered but that one single stage time. The final one – not just of the rally, but the entire season.
There can only be one winner, and unfortunately that means there must be one loser.
With both drivers giving it everything, the winner would have to produce something special. And he did. In a true ‘trees or trophies’ push, the win, the championship and the massive prize drive for becoming the new Junior world champion was his.
For the other, who’d won more rallies than anyone else across the year, a championship that must’ve felt like theirs had been lost in the final split of the season. Just seconds would decide the difference between a certain WRC future and an uphill struggle.
It’s amazing how the smallest of margins can make such a big difference.
“Yeah… that’s the beauty and the pain of rallying, and that’s why people follow this sport, I believe. You can have really dramatic things decided by the smallest of margins.”
That could’ve been Taylor Gill talking, who lost this year’s Junior WRC to Mille Johansson by an agonizing 1.6 seconds. But instead it was Egon Kaur, who famously missed out on the 2011 WRC Academy title to Craig Breen in remarkably similar circumstances.
Breen (left) went into 2011 title decider needing to make up ground on Kaur (right)
“It is basically the same, decided by the last split,” Kaur tells DirtFish.
If anybody can understand how Gill must be feeling right now, it’s Kaur. Except the pain was arguably even stronger for the Estonian, who amassed the same 111 points as Breen but lost on countback dictated by season stage wins.
Like Gill, Kaur led the championship heading to the finale but ended up finishing second on that rally, and indeed the championship.
He takes up the story: “For me, the plan was clear. Let’s say the risks were all on Craig’s side. Basically, he had to win a lot of stages.
“Let’s say it was a very strategic approach [from us] at the same time because if you look at how many retirements the other cars had or how many issues they had, it’s very likely that if you are pushing for stage wins and you’re having that kind of speed, then it’s very easy to pick up a problem.”
What unfolded was rather remarkable. Breen needed to win the event, and concede no more than two stage wins, to lift the title and what was then a prize drive in the SWRC. As Kaur puts it today: “I had everything to lose and Craig had everything to gain there.”
It came down to the final stage in Myherin. For both drivers, it was all or nothing. Breen would emerge with it all; Kaur with nothing.
“Definitely there was that [feeling of] I could have pushed more in that place or I could have still gone faster in that one. Of course, there were places like that,” Kaur remembers. “It definitely was not easy [to accept]. How can it be?”
Breen was on song and beat Kaur by 7.1s to rip the title from Kaur’s grasp. Utter, unfiltered delight for the Irishman; dejected despair for the Estonian.
“Let’s say today I’m always like laughing [about it],” Kaur continues, “because the main prize was half a million euros of budget for the next year, and the second place was a watch. So every time I look at that watch, you know it’s a bit of a laugh.
“It’s a very expensive watch, probably like three thousand euros or something, but if you compare it to the prize of half a million…”
Breen’s career ballooned from that moment. An SWRC title would follow the next year, before a European Rally Championship program with Peugeot and eventually top-line World Rally Championship drives with Citroën, M-Sport Ford and Hyundai over the years.
WRC Academy prize led to SWRC success for Breen and, eventually, top-tier manufacturer drives
For Kaur, he was back home to Estonia to rebuild himself. We’ll say it again: it’s amazing how the smallest of margins can make such a big difference.
“It took some months [to get over],” Kaur says, “but still if you are in the spirit of this whole rallying thing and you’re still a fighter, you still keep on pushing and that gives you, let’s say, new goals and then you still push forward.
“Of course if you put everything into it, which we did like budget-wise and so on, then it’s very difficult to continue in the same level if you haven’t got any prize like the prize was back then.
“We were all in [trying to win WRC Academy]. So going forward from there, budget-wise, was very difficult.”
Kaur did get a WRC2 opportunity with a Ford Fiesta R5 in Sardinia 2014, and he managed to win the Estonian championship in 2016. In the early 2020s he became a semi-regular in WRC2. But, now 38, that big break just never came.
Second in WRC2 on 2022 Rally Finland was a high point for Kaur
However, the defeat didn’t starve his desire. If anything it just fed it.
“It makes you hungrier, but still those opportunities [are hard to find afterwards] if you have put, let’s say, all eggs in the one basket,” Kaur reiterates.
“If you’re driving for these type of prizes, you usually do [put everything into it]. I think you don’t really have too many options in those cases [if you lose]. Depending, of course, what background you’re coming from.”
Those words will resonate with Gill. Selected as part of the FIA Rally Star program which ceases at the end of 2025, the Australian now faces a big battle to continue his world rallying dream without any clear funding in place.
Gill told DirtFish: “It hurts a lot, to be honest. I mean my whole life has been building up to this moment, especially the last three years with the Rally Star program. Everything – every day, every meal, every time I go to bed it’s always thinking and pushing towards the goal of winning this championship this year.
“We really have to think and see what we can do [now]. Obviously I didn’t get the prize for winning the championship so, yeah, we’re sort of on the bones of the arse and we have to think what to do next.
Finishing second on double-points finale wasn't enough for FIA Rally Star-backed Gill
“When you look at our overall results for all the rallies, it’s been super, super positive. So we can look at that and we can build on that into the future and, you know, see what it brings.”
Kaur’s career trajectory may not bring Gill much comfort, but his words just might. It does get easier. It doesn’t have to mean the end. It doesn’t make this season’s achievements any less impressive, just that he needs to find a different route to progress.
“I know it’s really tough,” Kaur advises. “I don’t know him personally, I’ve just followed the results because in the beginning he was driving in the same program as Estonian driver Romet Jürgenson, so we were following the driving back then as well.
“But yeah, let’s say falling out so closely, it’s definitely difficult, but then you have to look into yourself and decide which way you want to go, what type of a person you are. Do you want to still keep on fighting, keep on proving yourself?
“I would say that in the current situation, if he lets some months pass and he actually looks at what possible opportunities there could be in the future, if he really gets like a click, he even gets better, he even gets better speed, improves, I would say in the future when we have new regulations coming, new cars coming 2027, there are a lot of opportunities arising.
Just like Breen, Johansson's greater number of stage wins proved crucial to his title success
“So my advice would definitely be that if you still feel that this is something you want to pursue, be ready before the opportunities come. In anything you do, be ready for it because the time between has shown that opportunities actually do come, but then you have to make sure that you’re ready for it.”
Johansson is a deserving champion. Everybody knew the points structure at the start of the year, and the Swede got the job done. Of course Gill would have been equally as deserving, just as Kaur would’ve been 14 years before, but there can’t be two champions and the prize can’t be shared.
Right now it’s brutal, but one day – no matter where his career goes – Gill should see things like Kaur does now.
As they say: if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.
“I can’t change it,” he says, “so today definitely it’s looking at it as a laughing point.”
Words:Luke Barry
Tags: Egon Kaur, JWRC, JWRC 2025, Mille Johansson, Taylor Gill
Publish Date October 26, 2025 DirtFish
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