Sébastien Ogier and Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally Team secured victory at Rally Italia Sardegna after a close battle that lasted through to the final stage on Sunday.
This year’s edition of the Italian island event lived up to its reputation, with ambient temperatures exceeding 30 degrees centigrade combining with rough and rocky roads to test the drivers, their cars and their tyres to the limit.
TGR-WRT faced a challenge to continue their winning run with three of its drivers having to sweep the sandy stages for their rivals to follow on Friday. Ogier and co-driver Vincent Landais performed strongly to seize a narrow lead in the day’s last stage.
On Saturday, the fight for the win became another duel between Ogier and his rival and friend Ott Tänak (Hyundai), just as it had been on the previous round in Portugal and in last year’s Sardinian event.
Ogier carried a lead of 11.1 seconds into a demanding final day, which featured a pair of new stages to each be run twice. He continued to increase his advantage through the morning after winning the opening stage.
There was still a scare in the deep ruts of the rally-ending Power Stage when Ogier had a half spin towards a tree and had to reverse, but he hung on to seal the win by 7.9s.
With his fifth win on the event, Ogier becomes its most successful driver since the FIA World Rally Championship started visiting Sardinia in 2004. It is his third win from four starts so far this season while TGR-WRT maintains its 100 per cent winning record in 2025.
As in Portugal, Kalle Rovanperä completed a double podium finish in third. Running second on the road on Friday, he and co-driver Jonne Halttunen nonetheless showed good speed and avoided trouble, and saved their strongest performance for the Power Stage where they were fastest by 8.1s – also allowing them to top the Super Sunday classification.
Elfyn Evans and co-driver Scott Martin (above) had the toughest task opening the road on Friday but a patient approach paid off with fourth overall, despite losing around two minutes stopping to change a tyre on Saturday afternoon.
Evans also came fourth on Super Sunday and fifth in the Power Stage and continues to the lead the drivers’ championship, 19 points in front of Ogier and 20 ahead of Rovanperä. TGR-WRT have increased their manufacturers’ championship lead to 69 points.
Takamoto Katsuta lost time with a slow-speed roll on Friday and stopping to replace a tyre on Saturday but still finished in fifth overall. Sami Pajari showed strong performance in his TGR-WRT2 entry, running fourth at the end of Friday, but he too lost time changing a tyre on Saturday and then spun on Sunday’s first stage and damaged his suspension, ultimately finishing seventh.
There were six Toyota drivers in the top seven at the finish with Oliver Solberg finishing as the highest-placed Rally2 competitor in his GR Yaris Rally2. The Printsport driver did not nominate this event as one of his points-scoring rounds in WRC2 but recovered from an early impact to score nine stage wins in the category. Within WRC2, Kajetan Kajetanowicz finished second in his GR Yaris Rally2 run by Rallylab Technology, just 5.8s from the winner.
“There was a lot of drama throughout the event, and for some reason there always has to be drama in the Power Stage in Sardinia, but thankfully Seb managed to bring it home after a great performance right from the start. Kalle could build his performance day by day, finishing with an amazing time on the Power Stage, while Elfyn was suffering the most from opening the road but drove a clever event and took all the points that he could. All five of our cars finished in the points without retirements and overall it’s been a positive weekend for the championship.”
Welsh driver Elfyn Evans still leads the championship and added, “Overall we have to be satisfied with how our weekend has turned out. Fourth was realistically as much as we could expect starting first on the road on Friday. This is always a rally of attrition and getting to the end without big issues was vital. The pace of the top three was pretty hot but the positive thing is that we made clear progress through the rally in terms of feeling, especially in second-pass conditions, so that gives us some positives to take forward to Greece.”
PROVISIONAL FINAL CLASSIFICATION, RALLY ITALIA SARDEGNA
1 Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) 3h34m24.5s
2 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +7.9s
3 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +50.5s
4 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +5m05.7s
5 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +7m29.6s
6 Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2) +8m32.9s
7 Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +10m29.0s
8 Nikolay Gryazin/Konstantin Aleksandrov (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) +10m58.7s
9 Roberto Daprà/Luca Guglielmetti (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) +12m15.3s
10 Kajetan Kajetanowicz/Maciej Szczepaniak (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2) +12m21.1s
