Sébastien Ogier won Rally Islas Canarias on Sunday, completing a Toyota 1-2-3-4 finish for the second consecutive year on the asphalt roads of Gran Canaria. The nine-time world champion’s first victory of his 2026 title defense came with an eventual margin of 19.9 seconds, a number that flatters the competition.
The real story isn’t that Ogier won. It’s that nobody outside a Toyota even came close.
Across all 17 competitive stages, the GR Yaris Rally1 was never beaten. Not once. Adrien Fourmaux, the best Hyundai finisher in fifth, crossed the line three and a half minutes behind Ogier.
Thierry Neuville, the former championship contender, was another 11.5 seconds further back. M-Sport Ford’s Josh McErlean? Nearly six minutes off the lead.
The fight that did exist, and it was genuinely thrilling, happened entirely within Toyota’s garage. Oliver Solberg had closed to within 2.2 seconds of Ogier heading into Sunday’s final two stages, setting up a generational duel between the 22-year-old and the 41-year-old master.
Then Solberg got too ambitious over a crest on the penultimate stage, clipped an Armco barrier, tore a wheel off, and retired on the spot.
Ogier, who had led since Friday’s opening mountain stage, cruised home unchallenged. “From our side we did what we had to do,” he said.
Elfyn Evans slotted into second and made the most of Super Sunday’s points system, winning the Power Stage by 2.7 seconds to reclaim the drivers’ championship lead. He now sits two points clear of Takamoto Katsuta, who finished fourth. Sami Pajari took third for his fourth consecutive podium, a streak that announces him as a serious future threat.
Solberg’s crash and resulting zero-point haul dropped him to fourth in the standings, 33 points behind Evans and now behind Pajari by four. The Swede’s speed all weekend was undeniable, but so was the lesson: keeping up with Ogier through a full rally distance remains one of the sport’s hardest assignments.
Toyota team chairman Akio Toyoda noted that Ogier had been coaching Solberg even while the younger driver was closing in on him. That detail says plenty about the atmosphere inside a team that currently has no external pressure to speak of.
The manufacturer standings tell the tale plainly. Toyota leads Hyundai 265 to 167 after five rounds, a 98-point gulf that is widening, not narrowing.
Hyundai’s persistent understeer problems with the i20 N Rally1 remain unfixed, and Fourmaux openly refers to their internal scraps as the “Hyundai Cup.” When your best weekend means beating your own teammate by 11.5 seconds and nobody else cares, something is broken.
Fourmaux compounded his frustration with a 10-second jump-start penalty on the Power Stage. “That’s life,” he shrugged.
M-Sport Ford is barely a factor. Jon Armstrong slid off the road on Friday, went off again on Saturday requiring spectators to push him back on, and finished two minutes behind McErlean. McErlean himself was nearly six minutes off the lead.
In WRC2, Yohan Rossel gave Lancia a second consecutive category win, beating Alejandro Cachón by 25.1 seconds. That class remains competitive and unpredictable, which only sharpens the contrast with the top tier.
Four different Toyota drivers have won the first five rounds of 2026. Rally de Portugal arrives May 7 on gravel, where the surface change could theoretically tighten the gaps. But the pattern through five events is unmistakable: Toyota is racing itself, and everyone else is racing for fifth.
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