ELFYN Evans is expecting a “big fight” for the FIA World Rally Championship title after the Dolgellau regained the lead following his Toyota Gazoo Racing team’s exploits at Rally Finland last time out.

TGR-WRT is preparing to discover unfamiliar roads in South America when the championship visits Paraguay for the first time on 28-31 August.

The Rally del Paraguay will be the first of two consecutive rounds on South American gravel, with cars to then be transported over the Andes mountains to compete in Rally Chile just two weeks later.

Having completed an intense run of European rallies with a perfect 1-2-3-4-5 result on home roads at Rally Finland earlier this month, TGR-WRT travels to South America with its full fleet of five GR YARIS Rally1 cars – back in their regular all-black livery after a lighter silver summer scheme was used on the previous events.

With five rounds remaining in the 2025 season, the team has a lead of 87 points in the manufacturers’ championship, and three drivers leading the way in the title race.

Elfyn Evans is back in the lead of the drivers’ standings, with Kalle Rovanperä just three points behind after his home win at Rally Finland. Sébastien Ogier is 10 points further back in third, level with Hyundai driver Ott Tänak.

These three drivers will compete for manufacturers’ points, supported by Takamoto Katsuta – fresh from a strong second-place finish in Finland. Sami Pajari joins his team-mates in competing in all black for the next two rallies, even though his car remains entered under the TGR-WRT2 banner.

Evans said: “After Rally Finland we’re back in the lead of the drivers’ championship, but the pack is incredibly close, so we can expect a big fight until the end of the season.

“We’re heading into another gravel rally in Paraguay, so it might not be easy to defend that lead when we need to open the road, but like usual we’ll be trying our best to get a good result.

“It’s always a big challenge to prepare for a new rally, and especially when it’s outside of Europe and we’re not able to test there beforehand.

“We’ll need to wait for the recce to really see what the stages and the conditions are like, and try to adapt the car to suit that as best as we can.”

The rally will be based in the south of Paraguay in the city of Encarnación, situated on the banks of the Paraná river and the border with Argentina.

The route is formed by roads that have previously featured in Rally Trans.

The stages are expected to be generally fast, with some more technical sections through dense forest, while the red earth surface should be smooth but soft – meaning that deep ruts could form for the second pass of stages in particular.

After a ceremonial start on Thursday evening in Encarnación, the rally begins on Friday when 140.9 competitive kilometres will be driven across two loops of four stages.

The loop ends with a super special stage at the Autodromo Alfredo Scheid, which will be run for a third and final time at the end of Saturday morning. Saturday’s route is otherwise formed by a trio of stages to the west each run twice, before Sunday’s finale features a pair of repeated stages to the north-east.