Oliver Solberg stole the show, but there are other conclusions to draw form this year's trip to Tartu
Photography by Toyota, Hyundai & Red Bull
Words by Luke Barry
Oliver Solberg winning events in 2025 is not unusual – in WRC2, that is.
For the Swede to rock up in the Rally1 class with two weeks’ notice and absolutely dominate Rally Estonia was absurd, producing a performance that will be talked about for years to come.
We learned plenty from Rally Estonia 2025, but there really is only one place to start.
Remember when, after Greece, we were saying Oliver Solberg is clearly too good for WRC2? Appreciate you proving us right, Oliver!
Everybody could sense he son was ready for a Rally1 car again, but nobody could have expected him to win the first time out of the box.
Words simply don’t do Solberg’s performance justice. The crazy thing is that in less than two weeks, he’ll be back in a Rally2 car for Rally Finland. Surely, surely, that won’t be the case for much longer.
Estonia may be a good event for Solberg, but if you can beat the world’s best anywhere you deserve to be driving with them everywhere. The WRC teams cannot ignore Oliver Solberg anymore.
You’d be forgiven for missing this one, to be honest, given Solberg mania, but Ott Tänak now leads the championship by one point over Elfyn Evans.
While in recent rallies, Tänak closing on Evans said more about his impressive performances – in Estonia it perhaps said more of Evans being left wanting.
Road cleaning effect was still a factor at the weekend, but the expectation therefore was for Evans to be more performant than in Portugal, Sardinia or Greece. Sadly, his speed was a mirror image of what’s gone before.
He was the first to admit that he needs to find more speed before Finland, and he must for the sake of his world championship bid.
His response in Jyvaskylä, where he’ll no longer be first on the road, will ultimately be telling.
Tänak spent his home event fighting the car – writing off his victory chances before the rally had even begun, and then revealing he was maybe too “old school” to get on top of how the car wanted to be driven.
But second, third and fifth for Hyundai would suggest the series of homologation jokers it spent earlier in the year – which had faster, softer-surface rallies in mind – were worth it.
Have they made the i20 N Rally1 the benchmark? No. But it was a lot closer to Toyota than in the past – as proved by only Solberg’s GR Yaris getting ahead of the Hyundais in Tartu.
Team principal Cyril Abiteboul is aware Estonia-specific comparisons are skewed by the last visit to Estonia being two years ago, and the tires now changing from Pirellis to Hankooks, but took solace in what he saw.
“There was an interesting data point,” Abiteboul told DirtFish. “On Friday we had the powerstage of two years ago [Kambja] and we were absolutely nowhere at that stage two years ago. So the fact that we were very competitive does say something, probably.”
Hyundai was 0.2s/km off Toyota (Kalle Rovanperä) in 2023 on that stage, but this year won the first pass and was just 0.01s/km off on the second (both Adrien Fourmaux).
This was the banker.
Kalle Rovanperä’s gravel pace had been a worry, but no matter – Estonia was next; the rally Rovanperä usually wins for fun and had won the last 13 stages of prior to 2025.
Yet the same struggle to adjust to Hankook’s rubber manifested itself. That’s again bad news for his flailing championship bid, but catastrophic when you consider that if Rovanperä can’t produce magic here, where can he do it?
He said as much himself: “There are no excuses. If we cannot do it here in Estonia we cannot do it anywhere else either.”
A powerstage win and second on Super Sunday (an underrated trait of his season so far) helped rescue strong points to compliment his fourth place finish, but it’s looking as if Rovanperä just won’t be the driver we all know him to be when these tires are fitted to his Toyota.
With Oliver Solberg on the Rally1 entry instead of WRC2 (where he was initially due to score points in Estonia), Nikolay Gryazin had a clear shot at big points with Yohan Rossel and Gus Greensmith absent.
But unfortunately for the Škoda driver, damaged suspension on the second stage of the event ended his weekend. Opportunity squandered.
So up stepped Robert Virves.
The 2022 Junior WRC champion was majestic all-weekend long but especially on Friday when he a) built up a huge lead and b) did so while feeling sufficiently unwell that he needed to visit hospital for an hour that night.
After a tricky start to the season, Virves delivered a mega reminder to the world of just what he can do.
But when the WRC2 field reconvenes in Finland next week, it’ll be Solberg’s that’s favorite. How can’t he be when he was the class of the Rally1 field just a fortnight earlier?
Words:Luke Barry
Tags: Rally Estonia, Rally Estonia 2025, What we learned, WRC, WRC 2025
Publish Date July 21, 2025 DirtFish 
https://dirtfish-editorial.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com/2025/07/IedkRRUY-Solberg08EST25cm285-780x520.jpg July 21, 2025
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