Elfyn Evans has won the World Rally Championship after Oliver Solberg crashed out within sight of the finish on the last stage of the season in Sardinia on Sunday. The 37-year-old from north Wales is the first British driver to take the title in 25 years, and the win ends a run of five campaigns in which he finished second.
Evans and co-driver Scott Martin arrived at Rally Italia Sardegna with a 21-point lead, even though they had won only two of the season’s previous 12 events. Solberg was quicker over the weekend and was about a kilometre from the title, with two corners left, when his car left the road and ended up in the sand. Evans had already started preparing what would have been a sixth runner-up speech, and Martin said his driver was apologising for his own stage time while they waited for Solberg to finish.
Evans now sits alongside Scotland’s Colin McRae, champion in 1995, and Richard Burns, who won in 2001, as the only British men to take the title since the championship began in 1977. Louise Aitken-Walker became Britain’s first world champion in 1990, when a women’s series was run. Evans admitted it was hardly the way he would have chosen to win and said he felt for Solberg, whose father Petter won the 2003 title, calling the young Swede “one to watch for the future”.
The title closes a long list of near misses. Evans was runner-up in 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2024, and lost to Sebastien Ogier by four points at the final round in 2025. His father Gwyndaf, a British champion, also finished second four times. Evans won his first WRC stage in Germany in 2014 and took a first podium in Argentina a year later, but had to drop down to the WRC2 class in 2016. His first rally win came at his home event in Wales in 2017.
The Toyota Gazoo Racing driver celebrated by jumping into the Mediterranean with team colleagues, with travelling supporters on hand to cheer him. Martin had told anyone who asked during the week that nothing was settled until the crew reached the beach after the final stage. “How true that turned out to be,” he said.
