– Toyota dominates the home game in Japan, but the internal team duel at the top ended prematurely in the trees on Saturday morning. After a strong comeback, Oliver Solberg crashed and left Elfyn Evans with a comfortable lead. (Rally Japan 2026 results)
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Evans had already taken the lead on Friday. He made optimal use of the advantage of his early starting position and took the lead on WP2. Oliver Solberg, who had won the opening stage, lost valuable seconds on WP3 for a curious reason: a group of deer blocked the track.
“I braked and swerved to the left, but the animals ran unpredictably in all directions,” Solberg reported at the finish of the stage. At the end of Friday, he was 15.7 seconds behind Evans.
Sebastien Ogier, running sixth on the track, struggled extremely with the dirty conditions and an unsettled car, but still secured third place ahead of Sami Pajari.
Thierry Neuville (Hyundai) initially surprised on Friday morning with strong pace but fell back significantly in the afternoon on hard tires in drying conditions.
Home nightmare for Katsuta on Friday
For local hero Takamoto Katsuta (Toyota), the start turned into a disaster. A slip on a wet spot in WP1 led to a rear left tire damage. The forced switch to hard tires on a wet track cost massive time and confidence. Another excursion into the grass on WP3 completed the false start.
“It was the worst day of the season so far. Everything just went wrong,” Katsuta cursed deeply disappointed on Friday evening. Toyota team boss Jari-Matti Latvala sees the enormous pressure of expectations at the home game as a possible factor. Katsuta denies this, however, and instead blames missing information from the ice scouts for the tricky spots.
Solberg launches an attack – and overdoes it
Saturday morning began with a spectacular attack by Solberg on leader Evans. With strong best times on WP7 and WP9, he put pressure on the Welshman and temporarily reduced the gap to 10.6 seconds.
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Sebastien Ogier, on the other hand, could not keep up with the pace at the front and continued to complain about lack of grip due to the combination of hard tires and low track temperatures.
Neuville also continued to fall back. Handbrake problems on the twisty tracks and persistent understeer dropped the 2024 world champion behind his teammate Adrien Fourmaux (Hyundai) to seventh place.
On the tenth stage, events finally escalated: Solberg, who was on pace for the best time, lost the rear of his GR Yaris in a tight left corner and crashed into a tree. The severe damage to the rear right of the vehicle meant immediate retirement for the Swede.
Teammate Sebastien Ogier was not surprised at the finish: “The risk he took this morning was too high. It’s very unfortunate, but not really a surprise.”
For Solberg, this is the second accident in the fight for a rally win in three rallies. On the Canary Islands, he had already overdone it in the battle with Ogier and retired. After second place in Portugal, now comes the next disappointment.
Although he was slightly held up on the track by Solberg’s accident, Evans now leads the field with a 14.6-second advantage over Ogier. Sami Pajari moves up to third on the podium, while Takamoto Katsuta has fought his way up to fourth place after his black Friday.
The end of the morning loop was also overshadowed by a rollover of WRC2 driver Diego Dominguez, which led to a red flag. On Sunday, six more WPs are on the program, two of which are spectator stages of only two and a half kilometers.
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