DOLGELLAU’S Elfyn Evans has congratulated team-mate Kalle Rovanperä on winning his second consecutive FIA World Rally Championship titles with Toyota Gazoo Racing after finishing in second place on the penultimate round of the 2023 season, the Central European Rally.

After being crowned the youngest-ever World Rally Champion in 2022 driving the GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID, 23-year-old Rovanperä has now become the sixth driver to achieve back-to-back titles in the history of the WRC.

It’s the fifth year in a row that a TGR-WRT crew has won the drivers’ and co-drivers’ crowns, and also completes a third straight hat-trick of titles for the team after it clinched the manufacturers’ championship on the previous rally in Chile.

The team entered the inaugural cross-border Central European Rally in the knowledge that only Rovanperä or Evans could become this year’s drivers’ champion. With 31 points between them, Rovanperä had to avoid being outscored by Evans to ensure the title with a round to spare, and made a strong start on the first full day of the rally on Friday. He won four out of six stages on demanding wet asphalt roads in the Czech Republic to lead by 36.4 seconds at the end of the day.

Conditions remained challenging as the rally moved into Austria on Saturday morning, and Rovanperä suffered a spin but was able to continue with a reduced lead. Running in third overall, Evans would not be as fortunate, going off the road in SS11 and sustaining damage that stopped he and co-driver Scott Martin from going further.

Evans would restart on Sunday with the chance to still score points in the rally-ending Power Stage, but Rovanperä now only required a solid points finish to clinch the title.

Considering the situation and the treacherous conditions, the Finn adopted a more cautious approach after SS11, conceding the rally lead to Thierry Neuville (Hyundai) but remaining in a comfortable second place which he also managed carefully through the final day.

The result is his seventh podium of the season, one in which he has taken three victories so far and crucially finished in the top four in all but one of the 12 rounds held.

Evans scored his fourth stage win of the weekend after giving his all in the Power Stage.

Evans said: “I want to say a huge congratulations to Kalle and Jonne – as well as the whole team – for winning these titles.

“They’ve worked hard and done an incredible job and they deserve the title. From our side, there’s disappointment of course but we knew it was a long shot coming into the weekend and we had to give it a go.

“In fairness to Kalle, he was very strong on Friday and we didn’t have the pace to follow him. After that we continued to try, it didn’t work out this time, but sometimes that’s the way it goes and we’ll try again next year. We managed to get a few points from the Power Stage and now we can look forward to Rally Japan.”