M-Sport Ford’s Ott Tanak and co-driver Martin Jarveoja became WRC Rally Chile winners for the second time on Sunday, while rival team Toyota Gazoo Racing secured the manufacturers’ championship crown.
Tanak, driving a Ford Puma Rally1, seized the lead of the all-gravel South American event on Friday’s opening leg and, thanks to clever tire compound choices, built a commanding buffer which he carried through to Sunday’s short final leg.
It was Tanak’s second win of the 2023 season, the first coming on the ice and snow of the Swedish Rally, and it marks the end of a frustrating run of DNFs and niggling problems for the Estonian ace in recent events.
Tanak went into the final day’s four special stages with a lead of 58.3s and played it relatively safe to end the rally with a 42.1s winning margin. But the focus was on the battle for second as Hyundai’s Teemu Suninen led teammate Thierry Neuville by 13.9s, with the team ruling out using team orders to calm their dual.
Neuville and Suninen were the two fastest drivers on both of Sunday morning’s stages, and the gap between them shrank to just 6.7s. It was Neuville who was fastest again on the second pass of Las Pataguas, while Suninen did not see the finish as he hit a tree stump on the inside of a right-hander, which immediately sent him sliding off the road and deep into the trees.
Suninen’s i20 N Rally 1 machine was out on the spot, elevating Neuville to the runner-up place. It also opened the door for Toyota Gazoo Racing to clinch the FIA World Rally Championship manufacturers’ title with two rallies to spare.
Suninen’s demise meant Toyota needed to score four bonus points more than Hyundai in the rally-closing Wolf Power Stage. And with Neuville the only Hyundai entry still running, it did exactly that, with GR Yaris Rally1 drivers Kalle Rovanpera and Elfyn Evans setting the first- and second-fastest times respectively.
“A lot of things happened today, so I am really happy and pleased with everybody in the team and everybody working for the team that we managed to secure it here,” said Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT sporting director Kaj Lindström. “It is not just the people here in Chile in the service park, but everyone working for us.”
As well as taking second on the Power Stage, Evans finished third overall in Chile, which was enough to keep the WRC drivers’ championship battle alive. He headed home his teammate and WRC points leader Rovanpera — who was celebrating his 23rd birthday on Sunday — by 1m4.1s and now takes the intra-team battle to at least the penultimate round, the inaugural Central European Rally later this month.
However, with Rovanpera leading the WRC points by 31 points, post-Chile, and a maximum of just 60 on offer from the two remaining rallies, the Finn could clinch the title on the all-asphalt event.
More than five minutes back from Rovanpera in a lonely fifth overall, and completing a GR Yaris 3-4-5, was Takamoto Katsuta.
The remainder of the top-10 leaderboard comprised WRC2 runners, with Oliver Solberg holding on to the lead he’d grabbed on Saturday’s final stage to steer his Skoda Fabia RS to the win in international rallying’s second-tier category.
Fellow Skoda drivers Gus Greensmith and Sami Pajari — the up-and-coming Finn who’d looked set for the class win before major tire issues on Saturday’s final stage — completed the WRC2 podium, with Yohan Rossel (Citroen C3) and Nikolay Gryazin (Skoda) ensuring WRC2 runners packed the rest of the overall top 10.
The WRC returns to Europe next for the Central European Rally, a brand-new, tri-country event. The all-asphalt event takes places Oct. 26 -29 with a unique format that includes multiple border crossings to take in special stages in Germany, Austria and Czech Republic.
WRC Rally Chile, final positions after Day Three, SS16
1 Ott Tanak/Martin Jarveoja (Ford Puma Rally1) 3h06m38.1s
2 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +42.1s
3 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR Yaris Rally1) +1m06.9s
4 Kalle Rovanpera/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota GR Yaris Rally1) +2m11.0s
5 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnson (Toyota GR Yaris Rally1) +4m41.5s
6 Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Skoda Fabia RS – WRC2 winner) +8m18.5s
7 Gus Greensmith/Jonas Andresson (Skoda Fabia RS – WRC2) +8m44.3s
8 Sami Pajari/Enni Malkonen (Skoda Fabia RS – WRC2) +9m20.6s
9 Yohan Rossel/Arnaud Dunand (Citroen C3 – WRC2) +9m53.9s
10 Nikolay Gryazin/Konstantin Aleksandrov (Skoda Fabia RS – WRC2) +10m08.2s
WRC Drivers’ Championship after 11 rounds
1 Rovanpera 217 points
2 Evans 186
3 Neuville 155
4 Tanak 146
5 Sebastien Ogier 99
WRC Manufacturers’ Championship after 11 rounds
1 Toyota Gazoo Racing 466 points (2023 champions)
2 Hyundai Motorsport 360
3 M-Sport Ford 247
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