Elfyn Evans is back in first place in the 2025 FIA World Rally Championship for drivers as the Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally Team celebrates a ‘perfect result’ on home roads at Rally Finland.

Local hero Kalle Rovanperä and co-driver Jonne Halttunen secured a long-awaited first win on their home event with a record-breaking average speed of 129.9 km/h. Their win led a historic top-five lockout for the GR YARIS Rally1.

Takamoto Katsuta finished second overall with co-driver Aaron Johnston. He was second quickest to Rovanperä on the Power Stage to secure his overall position by 5.9s ahead of last year’s Rally Finland winners Sébastien Ogier and Vincent Landais.

Ogier went third-fastest on the Power Stage to hold off Elfyn Evans by just three seconds after Evans and his co-driver Scott Martin had won the first pass through Ouninpohja.

Ending up fourth in Super Sunday and fifth in the Power Stage, Evans moves back into the lead of the driver’s championship, three points in front of Rovanperä. Ogier is just 10 points further back in third. Sami Pajari completed the perfect result in fifth overall with co-driver Marko Salminen.

Elfyn Evans said:

“It’s a really nice result for the team to have all five cars in the top five. On my side I’m a bit disappointed how the final day turned out.

“It was an exciting format and we had a really good run the first time through Ouninpohja. The Power Stage didn’t go quite so brilliantly. I had a couple of places in the stage where I couldn’t get turned in like I wanted and lost too much time.

“Otherwise it was a good stage, but with such fine margins, we missed out on quite a lot of extra points. But we’ll continue onto the next one.”