WRC 2026 Rd.5 Day 2 | 2026 | PRESS RELEASE | WRC

Rally Islas Canarias: Day 2 Ogier leads a close race between TGR-WRT quintet

2026.04.24 (Fri)

Sébastien Ogier leads a closely contested Rally Islas Canarias after the first full day, with all five TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team drivers covered by half a minute at the head of the leaderboard.

Car 1 (Sébastien Ogier, Vincent Landais)

After Thursday evening’s stadium super special stage that opened the event, Friday took the crews around the island of Gran Canaria’s mountainous asphalt roads.

Ogier won both stages that ran during the morning (with one other stage being cancelled by the organisers) to establish an overall advantage of 5.9 seconds returning to the service park in Las Palmas. Sami Pajari ran second, with Elfyn Evans third, Oliver Solberg fourth and Takamoto Katsuta fifth.

Solberg found more confidence and pace after mid-day service, and pipped Ogier to the best time in SS5 by just 0.1s to leap up to second overall, before Ogier responded to edge him out by only 0.2s in SS6. Showing his experience especially in tyre management, Ogier then found 2s in the day’s final mountain test to increase his lead to 8.6s. After a second blast around the stadium super special to round out the day, this gap stands at 8.9s overnight.

Evans moved past Pajari for third overall in SS7, only for Pajari to take the place back as he set the fastest time in the super special. They are separated by just 0.5s overnight, both within 17s of the lead. Katsuta repeated his stage win from SS1 by setting the same time as Pajari in the super special and is 13.3s further back from Evans in fifth overall.

Alejandro Cachón runs second in WRC2 in a GR Yaris Rally2 entered by Toyota Spain, with TGR WRC Challenge Program driver Yuki Yamamoto also running well in ninth in the competitive secondary category.

Quotes:
Juha Kankkunen (Deputy Team Principal)
“It’s been a very good day for us. Obviously, we were strong here last year, so we had a good idea of the kind of setup we needed for the car, and it seems to be working well. Our drivers are generally happy and haven’t made any mistakes. Still, it’s rallying and we know that anything can happen, so we’re taking nothing for granted, but for the moment it looks good. We know that Seb, with his experience, can be very difficult to beat when he’s in this kind of form. Oliver has not so much experience, but he’s also looking very fast. Elfyn and Sami are not so far away either and doing well, and I’m sure Taka can be fast too if he’s feeling confident. I’m happy to let them keep pushing tomorrow and let’s see who comes out on top.”

Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“It’s not been a perfect day for us; I can’t be completely satisfied. These racing-style stages are fun to drive but very demanding for the tyres and the balance on a rally car. It wasn’t feeling bad, but I was struggling a bit to get it turning in as I would like. We did manage to make some changes during the day and had a bit of a better feeling and speed in the last proper stage. So that’s something more positive to round out the day and hopefully we can carry that into tomorrow.”

Sébastien Ogier (Driver car 1)
“We can be happy with today. The gaps are very close, which is normal on a rally like this, but it’s been evolving in the right direction for us. I wasn’t feeling completely happy with the car balance this morning, but I think we were all struggling a bit with that in these wide circuit-style stages where you place a lot of load on the tyres. This afternoon though we made some positive steps and it was just feeling better and better in the car, so at the moment I’m happy and hope we can carry on with this feeling tomorrow.”

Oliver Solberg (Driver car 99)
“It’s been a good day. This morning I was just trying to find the feeling a bit and it wasn’t easy, but we made some changes in service and I felt more comfortable in the car and we had a much better afternoon. We were trading tenths of a second with Seb, so it’s very cool to know that the speed is there. After what happened in Croatia I wanted to start calmly, see where my feeling was and just increase things step-by-step. I’m happy with the position I’m in tonight and maybe we’ll try to push a bit more tomorrow.”

Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“It’s not been an easy day for us. These are very nice stages, but I hoped they would be more enjoyable for me. In the morning already I was struggling a bit, and unfortunately this just seemed to get worse in the afternoon. I’ve just found it difficult to have the trust you need with the front end on these stages and to be as committed with the driving as I want to be, and so the times have not been great. It’s not been easy for the moment, but I have some ideas and hope we can find something to improve tomorrow.”

Sami Pajari (Driver car 5)
“Today has not been too bad. The stages have been really nice to drive, but my feeling has maybe not been quite as good as I was hoping for. It’s an extremely tight fight with our team-mates and it was a pity to lose a bit of ground in the afternoon. We were making some changes with the setup and they weren’t all going in the perfect direction, and when the time differences are so small, even the slightest thing can create that gap. Still, we’re not too far away and just need to keep pushing.”

End of day two (Friday):
1 Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) 54m27.5s
2 Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +8.9s
3 Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +15.9s
4 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +16.4s
5 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +29.7s
6 Dani Sordo/Cándido Carrera (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +52.0s
7 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +54.8s
8 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +1m03.6s
9 Josh McErlean/Eoin Treacy (Ford Puma Rally1) +1m41.1s
10 Yohan Rossel/Arnaud Dunand (Lancia Ypsilon Rally2 HF Integrale) +1m59.5s
(Results as of 21:05 on Friday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)

What's next?
Saturday is the longest day of the rally featuring 112.22 competitive kilometres to be driven across two loops of three stages. The Maspalomas stage takes crews to the south of the island ahead of two more tests in the north including Moya – Gáldar: the longest of the weekend at 28.9 km.