Paraguay and Chile expected to have more in common with Estonia and Finland than rougher gravel events
Photography by Red Bull
Words by David Evans, DirtFish Head of Media
For those who thought the summer of speed was over, think again. Or certainly think again about the speed part.
The next two rounds of the World Rally Championship take the teams to South America, where summer’s still half a year away. Paraguay is a step into the unknown, but Chile’s roads last year were, on average, less than 10mph slower than Latvia and Poland.
To put that into a wider context, Finland was quickest at 77mph, while Greece offered the slowest gravel action at an average of 52. Chile sat somewhere in the middle at 64.
But what about Paraguay?
“We have some information about what kind of conditions we might expect,” Toyota technical director Tom Fowler told DirtFish.
“We don’t believe it can be as extreme as some Paraguay rallies. We’ve seen some rallies out there can have quite a lot of rough sections, some fesh fesh and difficult places. From what I’ve understood the Paraguay organizers are trying to avoid this as much as possible and make it a more performance-based rally.
Kalle Rovanperä took victory on Chile's relatively high-speed roads last year
“I think the biggest question marks that I am aware of at the moment is weather conditions and water splashes and the rest of the road conditions seem relatively OK. The speed and the surfaces of Chile and Paraguay seem to be more towards these rallies in Estonia and Finland than the likes of the other three in Greece, Portugal, Sardinia.”
Given Hyundai’s upturn in speed across quicker events, Fowler predicts more of the same when it comes to close competition.
“Hyundai has been very, very fast, both in Estonia and Finland, much more than previous seasons. I would expect the performance level between the cars is going to be very close in those two South American events.”
For the record, the weather around the Encarnación service park for Rally del Paraguay is currently sitting in the mid 20s Celsius or the high 70s in Fahrenheit. Chile is a little more South American wintry with more rain and temperature values roughly half of those on offer to the east.
Rally del Paraguay runs from August 28-31, while Rally Chile is set for September 11-14.
Words:David Evans
Tags: Rally Chile, Rally Chile 2024, Rally Chile 2025, Rally Paraguay, Rally Paraguay 2025, WRC, WRC 2025
Publish Date August 14, 2025 DirtFish 
https://dirtfish-editorial.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com/2025/08/pNGadgSC-SI202409280055-780x520.jpg August 14, 2025
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