The battle between TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team drivers to be crowned the 2025 world champion will go down to the final day of the season on Saturday at Rally Saudi Arabia.
After the longest day of the new and demanding event on Friday, Sébastien Ogier currently holds a narrow advantage in his pursuit of a ninth world title. He sits in sixth position overall, two places in front of nearest rival Elfyn Evans and one behind Kalle Rovanperä.
The day consisted of two loops of three stages in the mountains and deserts around Jeddah, totalling 134.34 competitive kilometres. With each loop made up of 67.17km, tyre management and the high risk of punctures from the rock-lined stages would be a key factor. The road cleaning effect also continued to disadvantage those running nearer the front of the road order.
Sitting second at the start of the day, rookie Sami Pajari remained in a remarkably close fight for a maiden victory, closing to within 4.5 seconds of the lead over the morning’s loop of three stages. He was part of a top four covered by just 6.3s after the afternoon’s first test, but unfortunately had to stop and change a tyre in SS13, conceding two minutes.
This dropped him into the midst of his championship-fighting team-mates who, having faced the worst of the road cleaning on Thursday, now also experienced delays induced by tyre damage. The last stage of the afternoon in the especially rocky Wadi Almatwi proved particularly dramatic in this regard across the field, with Ogier among the drivers to experience a loss of tyre pressure. He was able to limit his time loss to stage winner Rovanperä to 23.8s, slipping behind overall by just 0.2s.
Evans suffered a more significant setback in the morning’s first pass of Wadi Almatwi when he had to stop and change a tyre; losing around 1m40s. He recovered back up to eighth by the end of the afternoon, meaning he is just one point behind Ogier in the championship as it stands ahead of the final day, when up to 10 extra points will also be available.
Takamoto Katsuta had an overshoot in SS12 and subsequent tyre damage but avoided major time loss and ended the day up in third overall after a penalty for another driver for checking in early. He is 41.5s from the lead and 38.1s from second place.
Oliver Solberg is the lead Rally2 driver in 10th overall in his Printsport-run GR Yaris.
Quotes:
Juha Kankkunen (Deputy Team Principal)
“It has been a dramatic day to follow, especially this last stage with so many things happening: it’s a bit much for the old heart! Anyway, all of our cars are still in one piece at least. It’s a pity that Sami dropped away from the lead fight with this tyre change, because he has been doing a good job, but now Taka is up into the podium places which is good. Our three title contenders lost a lot of time yesterday and had no chance to really fight back today because of the cleaning, but it is still a close fight between them and it will be exciting to see who comes out on top tomorrow.”
Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“It wasn’t ideal what happened to us this morning. We got the tyre pressure alarm quite early in the third stage of the loop and with so far still to go we had to make the decision to stop and change it rather than try to drive on it. Thankfully we could make up some places this afternoon with others having issues and so it’s still quite open and it will all come down to tomorrow now. It’s pretty straightforward in a way: we just have to give it the best shot we can and see what happens.”
Kalle Rovanperä (Driver car 69)
“It’s been a long and tricky day. I tried to just be fast and avoid the trouble. The conditions were really tough already on the first pass; even with only four cars in front of us, we still had a lot of surprises and loose stones. The last stage of the loop was especially rough and that’s where everyone else started to get issues and we managed to make up some positions. The situation is still not in our favour but at least we are in the mix and we will just try to enjoy our final day tomorrow and go for it.”
Sébastien Ogier (Driver car 17)
“It’s been a demanding day. I knew that Elfyn had stopped in the last stage of the morning and took that stage a bit more carefully because of that, but it didn’t really change much about the championship: we still had to try and stay ahead of Kalle. We anticipated that this last stage of the day would be the roughest one of the weekend and I tried to have a careful rhythm there, but had this loss of tyre pressure at the end. At least we still have our destiny in our hands: tomorrow we hope to stay out of trouble and have to go for it.”
Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“It’s good to be up to third overall tonight. We had some difficulties during the afternoon with the tyres but we managed it without needing to stop on the stage, and this helped a lot to gain the positions. To have 42s to the lead is quite a big gap, but there’s still three stages to go and you never know what can happen, especially here with how tough this rally has been. We will just try to keep going like this tomorrow and avoid problems and see where we are at the end.”
Sami Pajari (Driver car 5)
“It was a really close fight still today. I was expecting there would start to be some bigger time gaps, but everyone was pushing quite hard and the margins were small. I still felt I was being clever in the places where I could see a risk of damaging the car or tyres, and in other sections I was doing all I can. Unfortunately we had to stop and change the tyre in SS13. We were not the only ones to have such trouble, but we were chasing for our first victory and really in the fight. The pace was there, so it’s a big disappointment but of course we need to take the positives into the last day tomorrow.”
End of day three (Friday):
1 Mārtiņš Sesks/Renārs Francis (Ford Puma Rally1) 2h43m20.1s
2 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +3.4s
3 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +41.5s
4 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +57.6s
5 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +1m12.6s
6 Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +1m12.8s
7 Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +1m34.8s
8 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +3m52.6s
9 Grégoire Munster/Louis Louka (Ford Puma Rally1) +6m13.4s
10 Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2) +7m26.7s
(Results as of 19:30 on Friday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)
What's next?
The final day of the season is formed by 65.86 competitive kilometres to be driven across three stages. It includes the longest stage of the rally – Asfan, at 33.28 kilometres – which separates two passes of Thahban. The second pass serves as the season-ending Power Stage, offering up to five potentially decisive bonus points, as does the separate Super Saturday classification.
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Rd.14 Rally Saudi Arabia
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