Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally Team return to gravel action on Rally Portugal 7-10 May, aiming to continue their unbeaten run in 2026.
The team have won all five FIA World Rally Championship events so far this season, including most recently a 1-2-3-4 finish on the asphalt roads of the Rally Islas Canarias. This result extended their lead in the manufacturers’ championship to 98 points.
Portuguese gravel offers a very different challenge but has been successful terrain for the team, who have won the last six editions of the event.
Elfyn Evans is among the team’s previous winners – having triumphed in 2021 – and currently leads the drivers’ championship by two points over team-mate Takamoto Katsuta, who has also performed strongly in Portugal in the past. Sami Pajari is third in the standings, 29 points from the lead, after taking four consecutive podium finishes, with Oliver Solberg four points further back in fourth. Solberg was a winner in Portugal in the WRC2 category in 2025 driving the GR Yaris Rally2.
Sébastien Ogier, who sits sixth in the standings after scoring the first win of his partial 2026 campaign in the Canaries, holds the record for the number of WRC wins in Portugal at seven, following victories in the past two years.
TGR WRC Challenge Program driver Yuki Yamamoto will be one of 11 at the wheel of GR Yaris Rally2 cars in a bumper field of 45 Rally2 entries. Roope Korhonen leads the WRC2 entry list among GR Yaris Rally2 drivers, which also features proven category winners Gus Greensmith, Teemu Suninen and Alejandro Cachón, while multiple Australian champion Harry Bates contests his first European WRC round, joining French duo Eliott Delecour and Adrien Mosca and Dutchman Bernhard ten Brinke in the class.
Portuguese pair Rúben Rodrigues and Pedro Almeida also enter their home event in GR Yaris Rally2 cars. Another member of the TGR WRC Challenge Program, co-driver Tomiya Maekawa, will compete alongside Jarkko Nikara in the WRC3 category.
A founding round of the WRC, the Rally de Portugal is based in the north of the country around the second-largest city of Porto, with the service park located in nearby Matosinhos. Large crowds of passionate fans line the stages, which are fast but technical in nature, with a surface that starts out soft and sandy but often becomes rocky and rutted come the second pass.
The action begins earlier this year with shakedown staged on Wednesday afternoon before the rally starts once more from the historic central city of Coimbra on Thursday. Two gravel stages north of the city near Aveiro are run already that afternoon, before an evening super special on the streets of Figueira da Foz.
Friday as usual is centred around Arganil, which hosts a mid-day remote service, with a total of seven stages to be driven in the area. Saturday is the longest day of the rally, featuring two loops of four stages north-east of Porto plus another super special at the Lousada rallycross circuit. The classic Vieira do Minho test moves to Sunday to be paired with the famous Fafe, the second pass of which serves as the rally-ending Power Stage.
