Evans takes the WRC title by five points after Solberg crashes two corners from home

Elfyn Evans became world rally champion on Sunday in Sardinia after Toyota team-mate Oliver Solberg crashed two corners from the end of the final stage of Rally Italia Sardegna. Evans, 37, from Dolgellau in north Wales, finishes the 2026 World Rally Championship on 243 points. Solberg, 25, is on 238. Sami Pajari is on 237. Sebastien Ogier is fourth on 189 and Adrien Fourmaux fifth on 183. Evans and co-driver Scott Martin won two of the 13 rounds. The title was decided by a crash, not by a victory on the day.

Solberg needed to beat Evans on the final stage and collect the bonus points that come with it. At 3.05 pm local time Evans thought the title had gone. At 3.06 pm Solberg left the road in the Sardinian sand. Evans said afterwards that it had not sunk in, that he had been sure it was over, and that he felt for Solberg, who had had an exceptional weekend. The margin in the table is five points. Pajari, another Toyota driver, sits one point behind Solberg. Three Toyotas fill the podium of the championship. Hyundai's challenge ended with Fourmaux fifth.

Evans is the third British man to win the drivers' title since the championship took its present form in 1977. Colin McRae won it in 1995. Richard Burns won it in 2001 and died in 2005. The gap from Burns to Evans is 25 years. Louise Aitken-Walker won a women's world title in 1990, when the series ran a separate cup. Evans had finished runner-up five times before Sunday. The near-misses are the context for his line that he thought it was over again. The crash that settled it was not his.

The sporting residue is awkward inside one team. Solberg and Evans are both Toyota drivers. A team-mate's off on the last stage hands the other the championship. Evans's public comment was aimed at Solberg, not at the points. The classification does not record sympathy. It records 243, 238 and 237. A five-point title, with the third driver one point further back, is as tight as the modern points system, with its stage bonuses, can finish. Solberg lost it in a few hundred metres. Evans did not have to pass him.

Martin, the co-driver, shares the title. Rally crews are classified as a pair, and the calls on a Sardinian stage are the co-driver's. The BBC's season note, that the crew won only two of 13 rallies, is the other half of the result. A championship won on consistency and on someone else's final-stage error is different from one won by a run of event victories. Ogier, an eight-time champion still in the field, ended on 189, 54 points back. The title fight was a three-car Toyota argument, not a fight with the rest of the paddock.

The crash site is the fact that will be replayed. Two corners from the finish, sand, a car that had been on course for the bonus Solberg needed. Evans could only watch. Power-stage points in the current WRC rules are large enough that a single stage can overturn a season lead, which is why a driver leading the table can still lose it at 3.05 pm. The same rules are why a crash at 3.06 pm can hand it back. Anyone writing the result as a comeback drive is writing over the classification. Evans took the title because Solberg did not finish the stage in front of him.

Britain's last men's WRC champion, Burns, won his title in 2001 and did not get a full defence. McRae's 1995 title is the other marker Evans is now set beside. The comparison is chronological, not a claim about speed. What Sunday added is a name on the 2026 list and a five-point margin produced in the last corners of Sardinia.