Oliver Solberg is into the Rally1 club; Ott Tänak's checks out. David Evans reflects
Photography by DirtFish & Hyundai
Words by David Evans, DirtFish Head of Media
Standing in a nondescript Toyota City hotel room waiting for Oliver Solberg to come back from the barbers was far from the most conventional start to the week.
But there we were: room 1216, just after 9am on Monday morning.
We were there with permission from Toyota Gazoo Racing’s communication overlord Hans De Bauw. But at the same time, we weren’t there at all. This interview wasn’t happening. How could it? Oliver Solberg wasn’t a Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally Team member, so what would we have to talk to him about?
Knock at the door and in came this year’s WRC2 champion and Rally Estonia winner.
Half-mullet was the immediate answer. With a trim of the beard to boot.
Time was of the essence. Oliver whipped off his cutting-edge cool jacket and replaced it with a standard-issue TGR black, white and red zip-up. Quick check in the mirror, hat straight. Let’s go.
Professional way beyond his 24 years, Solberg trotted off pitch-perfect lines to set HDB purring before running to his own room to pack his bag post-Rally Japan and pre-biggest announcement of his life.
A couple of hours later, 25 floors above Nagoya, the moment arrived and Oliver Solberg was introduced to the room and invited to sit next to his new team-mate… the one with eight world championships. Watching him in the press conference was fascinating. The smile was omnipresent in the same way that a bike-loving child beams at a bike-shaped present on Christmas morning.
Oliver Solberg and Elliott Edmondson’s arrival at the World Rally Championship’s top table is long overdue, but they’ve arrived. And next year’s going to be an absolute blast.
Monday’s news and our embargoed interview was very much needed after Sunday’s night’s Estonian bombshell. Bombshell?
Probably not. Ott Tänak had telegraphed this one from the middle of the season as he pulled fewer and fewer punches and found more and more acerbic ways to remind the Hyundai team that this wasn’t the way things were supposed to be done.
But still, when the news dropped it still took a while to settle, to sink in. No Tänak next year. Gone. Will he be back? Who knows, but Casino Square won’t be the same without those blue eyes drilling deep in the search of the true meaning of every seemingly innocuous question.
Will we miss him?
Massively.
Tänak remains one of the fastest drivers in the history of the sport, certainly somebody whose rich talent and rapid pace warranted way more than just that single title. Maybe there are more to come, maybe this is just a hiatus and he’ll be back once the sport’s sorted itself out and found a more sustainable set of technical regulations and a way to promote talents as prodigious as his own.
But for now, he’s checking out.
Six years ago, in the days pre-DirtFish Media, we were busy hatching plans and playing with logo positions on his overalls and crash helmet. Our owner Steve Rimmer and his friend Markko Märtin had found the perfect way to launch the platform you’re reading this on now: a partnership with Ott. When the 2020 season blinked into life, all eyes were on the defending world champion – all eyes were on the word ‘DirtFish’ emblazoned across Tänak’s crash helmet, caps, hats and, back when they were very much in a pandemic-enforced vogue, facemasks.
For two years, Tänak was the perfect partner for DirtFish. He helped raise our profile and lay the foundations on which we would go on to build one of the world’s biggest off-road media brands.
Next year’s going to be a very strange one without him – and, of course, without his fellow world champion Kalle Rovanperä. Fortunately, Solberg’s smile, half-mullet and outrageous pace will be more than enough to keep us interested.
But what a day of news it’s been.
Words:David Evans
Tags: Oliver Solberg, Ott Tanak, WRC, WRC 2026
Publish Date November 10, 2025 DirtFish 
https://dirtfish-editorial.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com/2025/11/38zfWaD6-WhatsApp-Image-2025-11-10-at-13.25.17-780x579.jpeg November 10, 2025
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