Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally Team will encounter new terrain when Rally Islas Canarias plays host to a round of the FIA World Rally Championship for the first time this week 24-27 April.
The island of Gran Canaria, located off the coast of north-west Africa, is the venue for round four of the 2025 season and can be considered to be the first pure asphalt event of the year. It will also be the first Spanish round of the WRC held since 2022.
TGR-WRT make the trip leading the manufacturers’ championship by 26 points following victories in each of the opening three rounds. Their driver Elfyn Evans tops the drivers’ standings by 36 points following his back-to-back wins in Sweden and Kenya.
Sébastien Ogier returns to action for the first time since his Rallye Monte-Carlo victory in January to feature in a full line-up of five GR Yaris Rally1 cars, with the trio of Ogier, Evans and Kalle Rovanperä nominated to compete for manufacturers’ points.
Elfyn Evans said earlier this week, “We’ve had a good run of rallies to start the season but it changes nothing really for me in terms of approach: we just want to go and have a good rally and achieve the best result possible.
“In terms of character, we can expect the stages to be generally very clean and quite twisty. The majority of asphalt rallies we’ve had in the championship over recent years have been more on the dirty side and we’ve missed the variety of a proper racing-style rally like this.
“With very little cutting, road position shouldn’t have a huge bearing, so I don’t think it will be much of an advantage to be running first if at all; I suspect it should be similar conditions for everybody and a fair fight.”
