Rally Finland 2026: How Sami Pajari Won His Home Round and What It Means for the Title Fight
Sami Pajari won the 2026 Secto Rally Finland on home soil, backing up his maiden World Rally Championship victory in Estonia two weeks earlier with a second straight win in front of his own fans.
The 24 year old and co-driver Marko Salminen beat Toyota team-mate Oliver Solberg by 26.7 seconds to take Finland's 200th win in WRC history, on the 75th running of one of the sport's oldest and fastest events. Elfyn Evans completed an all-Toyota podium in third, a result that stretched his championship lead rather than shrank it, despite a heavy roll of his own earlier in the weekend.
This week's episode of The Motorsport Files goes through every part of that story. Host Drew Bentham is joined by Chris Gilbertson to talk through a rally that swung from torrential rain and steamed up windscreens on Friday to a genuinely frightening crash for nine time champion Sebastien Ogier on Saturday evening, and what it all means heading into the final third of the season.
How Rally Finland 2026 Unfolded
Rally Finland ran from 30 July to 2 August across twenty special stages and 316.04 kilometres of gravel roads around Jyväskylä, more than half of the route freshly designed for the anniversary edition. Ogier, reunited with veteran co-driver Julien Ingrassia for the first time in nearly five years after regular navigator Vincent Landais was unavailable, set the pace from the first stage on Friday morning and looked in complete control heading into Saturday afternoon.
Evans had other ideas until his own mistake intervened. Running wide at the end of stage 14, he rolled his GR Yaris into a ditch, losing close to two minutes as spectators helped haul the car back onto the road. Toyota's mechanics rebuilt the car overnight, replacing the front and rear bumpers, side panels, bonnet, tailgate and a headlight in a single service, and Evans was back fighting for the podium by Sunday.
Ogier's rally ended far more dramatically. On stage 17, holding a 20.9 second lead over Pajari, his Yaris left the road at speed and rolled several times into the trees. Both he and Ingrassia climbed out under their own power and were airlifted and driven to hospital as a precaution. Toyota confirmed the following morning that both were fine and had been discharged, but the crash handed the rally lead, and with it the win, to Pajari.
A Weekend Shaped by the Weather
Rally Finland is normally defined by its speed, but this year the rain had just as much to say about the result. A downpour on Friday afternoon turned some of the fastest gravel roads in the championship into something closer to ice, and the change caught out driver after driver. Josh McErlean, Esapekka Lappi and Thierry Neuville all had offs before the day was out, with Lappi's crash heavy enough to bend the roll cage and end his weekend. Neuville tore the front left corner off his Hyundai but somehow kept going, salvaging fifth place despite the damage. Even the cars that stayed on the road struggled. Toyota's misted up windscreens and open air vents left several drivers, Katsuta included, barely able to see the road ahead for long stretches of a stage, a problem that became one of the more talked about quirks of the entire weekend. Through all of it, Finland's famously dedicated fans were out with tow ropes ready, helping haul more than one car back onto the road so its crew could keep fighting.
Sebastien Ogier huge Rally Finland Crash
Ogier's crash on stage 17, known locally as Västilä, remains one of the defining moments of the weekend. He had been leading comfortably in a car that looked like his best of the season, and by most accounts the accident happened without any obvious warning, the car failing to turn in for a right hander moments after a clean change of direction. Both crew members stayed conscious throughout and were confirmed as generally uninjured, though they were kept under observation overnight given the force of the impact. Ogier later thanked Toyota for building a car strong enough to protect them both, and Ingrassia, standing in for the first time in nearly five years, was praised by the team for looking after his driver in the immediate aftermath.
Sami Pajari's Rise to Title Contender
Two rallies ago, Pajari was a solid but unspectacular points scorer, a driver who had built his reputation on consistency rather than outright speed. Estonia changed that picture, and Finland confirmed it. He is now the first Finnish driver to win his home round in consecutive years since Kalle Rovanperä did it in 2025, and only the third Finn since Mikko Hirvonen and Jari-Matti Latvala to win back to back WRC rounds in the same season. Pajari has spoken about simply rediscovering his enjoyment behind the wheel rather than making any major technical change, and it shows in results that now put him firmly ahead of every other challenger bar Evans himself.
Rally Finland 2026 Final Classification
Pos | Driver / Co-driver | Team | Time / Gap |
1 | Sami Pajari / Marko Salminen | Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 | 2:27:58.0 |
2 | Oliver Solberg / Elliott Edmondson | Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 | +26.7s |
3 | Elfyn Evans / Scott Martin | Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 | +1:19.5 |
4 | Adrien Fourmaux / Alexandre Coria | Hyundai i20 N Rally1 | +1:35.9 |
5 | Thierry Neuville / Martijn Wydaeghe | Hyundai i20 N Rally1 | +3:52.5 |
6 | Takamoto Katsuta / Aaron Johnston | Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 | +4:18.2 |
7 | Josh McErlean / Eoin Treacy | Ford Puma Rally1 | +4:32.7 |
8 | Jari-Matti Latvala / Juho Hänninen | Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 | +8:25.5 |
9 | Robert Virves / Jakko Viilo | Škoda Fabia RS Rally2 | +8:46.9 |
10 | Teemu Suninen / Janni Hussi | Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 | +9:03.0 |
Sebastien Ogier and Julien Ingrassia retired after their stage 17 accident while leading the rally.
How the WRC Championship Standings Look After R10
Evans now leads the drivers' championship by 30 points, having stretched his advantage for the second event running despite his own roll on Saturday. Pajari's win moves him up to second, comfortably clear of Takamoto Katsuta in third. With four rounds and a maximum of 140 points still on the table, the title fight is not settled, but Evans arrives in South America in as strong a position as he has held all year.
Pos | Driver | Points |
1 | Elfyn Evans | 201 |
2 | Sami Pajari | 171 |
3 | Takamoto Katsuta | 160 |
4 | Oliver Solberg | 156 |
5 | Sebastien Ogier | 139 |
6 | Adrien Fourmaux | 129 |
7 | Thierry Neuville | 125 |
8 | Esapekka Lappi | 25 |
9 | Hayden Paddon | 21 |
10 | Josh McErlean | 21 |
Toyota's grip on the manufacturers' title looks just as secure. The factory squad and its second entry combined have now built a lead that Hyundai and M-Sport will find almost impossible to close before the season ends.
Pos | Team | Points |
1 | Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally Team | 514 |
2 | Hyundai Shell Mobis World Rally Team | 340 |
3 | Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT2 | 184 |
4 | M-Sport Ford World Rally Team | 130 |
The Rest of the Weekend
Away from the Rally1 battle, WRC2 produced its own story. Robert Vervis extended his unbeaten run in the class to four wins from four starts this season, though not without late drama. Estonian rival Teemu Suninen had looked set to beat him until a 30 second penalty for failing to stop and check on a crashed competitor during stage 11 dropped him back to third, behind Vervis and Jari-Matti Latvala, who took the class win on his home stages in a GR Yaris Rally2 co-driven by Juho Hänninen. Nineteen year old Estonian Jasper Vaja also caught the eye, finishing fourth in WRC2 in only his second WRC start.
Beyond the results sheet, this episode spends real time on the human side of the weekend. Drew and Chris talk through why Evans looks like a genuinely different driver in 2026, having spent the off season working specifically on the Friday pace that cost him the title last year, and pay tribute to the Finnish fans who spent the entire weekend pulling stricken cars out of ditches so drivers could carry on. There is also a longer conversation about Esapekka Lappi's heavy crash and what it might mean for his future in a Rally1 seat, Adrien Fourmaux's difficult season in a Hyundai that only seems to work in dry conditions, and the newly confirmed sale of the WRC promoter and what it could mean for manufacturer interest in the championship going forward.
The pair also spend time on the wider picture, including Martins Sesks' high speed crash that ended his weekend early, Josh McErlean's climb into the top ten of the drivers' championship, and Teemu Suninen's plan to wrap up the ERC title this year before mounting a fuller WRC2 push in 2027. There's a shoutout too for co-driver Yanni Hussey and for nineteen year old Jasper Vaja, who Chris has been tipping as one to watch all season, plus some early thoughts on what next year's WRC27 regulations might mean for a grid that badly needs more manufacturers to commit.
The episode is available now wherever you get your podcasts, as well as on YouTube at @tmfpod23. If Rally Finland is even half as good next year as it was for its 75th edition, it will be worth the wait, but before that the WRC heads to South America for round 11 in Paraguay from 27 to 30 August, where Evans starts as the man with everything to lose.
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