The final day then saw the crews face only two stages, but they were a double run of a long stage over 24 kilometres. Josh and Eoin returned to the action following their mid-afternoon retirement with a damaged engine manifold on their Puma, the Motorsport Ireland backed crew would open the road throughout the two stages.

 

Into SS17 Kääriku 1 and it was a great start to the super Sunday standings as Oliver set the pace from rally leader Sami, whilst Adrien had a fantastic stage and increased the gap to his teammate Thierry from 1.9 seconds to 9.8 seconds. Elfyn was also quick, matching the third placed time set by Adrien. Josh who was opening the road had a small off at a junction, but at least was able to finish the stage.

 

Then it was onto the final stage, SS18 Kääriku 2 the Powerstage and Oliver was fastest this time and Thierry was second with Elfyn third. The final two positions in the powerstage were taken by Seb and Takamoto. Sami and Marko crossed the line with the sixth best time and had taken their first top class victory and what a superb drive from the young Finnish crew. They climbed atop their Yaris and celebrated their victory.

Let’s hear from the drivers then and take a look at the final finishing positions, plus the full points standings.

 

Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT

Sami Pajari

“It’s simply an amazing feeling. ‘Arigato gozaimasu’ to Morizo-san and everyone at TGR-WRT for your support and for trusting in me. Thanks to all my supporters, family and friends who stood behind me even when we had tricky times. I also want to thank myself for not giving up and for continuing to push. We’ve had a good first part of the season and after being so many times on the podium, there was no doubt this result was coming, but it’s never easy at this level. This is one of my favourite rallies together with Finland, and I was just enjoying the driving and everything felt natural. Let’s now enjoy the moment before our home event at Rally Finland.”

Oliver Solberg

“This has been a very good weekend. It was very important for me to have a clean weekend and find a good rhythm and get back the feeling and the confidence. Thank you to the team who have supported through a tough time, and I’m very happy to bring back this great result and to be back on the podium. Sami and Marko have done an amazing job with incredible speed and really deserve this result. Today I was able to turn it up just a few percent and take the maximum points from Sunday, so I’m very happy.”

Sébastien Ogier

“It’s been a lot of fun to be back here in Estonia this weekend driving these amazing roads and this fantastic event; it was definitely the right decision. Congratulations to Sami and Marko on their first win: they were clearly the fastest this weekend, so enjoy it! On my side I was not far from the target I set myself. After five years away from these high commitment roads, I was just missing a little bit, and maybe a few tenths on this final day. Still, we scored decent points for the championship, and we will go to Rally Finland with a higher target.”

Elfyn Evans

“We faced a tough start to the weekend with the stages being so dry and the cleaning effect so clear. In the end, I think we clawed back as many positions as we could and that sixth was realistically the most that was possible. Then, the final day was quite OK for us. I think the rain helped a bit to even things out and we had a pretty good run through both stages. So, we came away with some decent points and now we’ll look forward to Rally Finland.”

Takamoto Katsuta

“This weekend did not go the way that we had hoped. We knew that Friday could be difficult with our road position, but our pace was not bad, and I think we were doing our job quite well until we had to stop, and this really affected the rest of our rally, because it was hard to do much from first on the road. It’s very frustrating but nothing is over, and we keep going and keep pushing. We tested some different things with the car for Rally Finland and I hope we have a good rally there.”

 

Hyundai Motorsport

Adrien Fourmaux

“It feels very good to be back on the podium, it was a proper push today in my battle with Thierry, on the first run especially and then we had to ensure the result on the second run. Clearly the first run made the difference today because we had different setups, and it was optimised for the first pass and then a bit worse for the second, but we had a really big push on the first one. In the Power Stage, we knew that we had a decent gap; I should have done a little bit better, but overall, it has been a very positive rally, a good start for us on the fast rallies and I hope we can repeat this kind of performance in Finland.”

Thierry Neuville

“We started the rally with some issues, and we couldn’t really get the car working, so that meant we had to swap a lot of things for Saturday, which suddenly helped the performance to come back. We were continually improving throughout the day and closed on third by the end of Saturday, but I was just not quite in my rhythm this morning and we lost out to Adrien, who definitely deserved to take third place, hats off to him. It is still a good result for the team, considering where we came from, and second in the Power Stage was the maximum we could achieve from the weekend.”

Esapekka Lappi

“We had a challenging weekend in which we struggled with the pace. Generally, the car felt fine throughout the days, it was just difficult to understand why the speed and the times weren’t there versus the competition. On the other hand, we were able to gain more information and data on the setups and tyres, plus more mileage ahead of Finland, where we hope to be better.”

 

M-Sport Ford WRT

Mārtiņš Sesks

“All in all, I think it was a weekend with positives. We did a good job on Friday with our limited experience, and looking ahead to Finland, Friday’s performance is a good positive – it has a lot of similarities with Finland. The rest of the rally was about managing; we did okay, but I wouldn’t say great. I’d say it’s good preparation for Finland, where the grip is higher and maybe we can be a bit more competitive there.”

Jon Armstrong

“It was a bit of a tricky start to the rally, we had the tyre debead on the first stage, over the jump, and then we struggled to make back the time we’d lost. But even without that we’d only have gained one position; the difference was the road position we lost going into Saturday, and we don’t know how much we could have gained with that.

“Overall, we’re happy with the pace. When you gauge it against Josh and Mārtiņš in the same car it’s looking quite good, so we’re happy with that, and we’re looking forward to Finland – it’s going to be a good experience in one of these cars.”

Josh McErlean

“It was a bit frustrating, obviously, what happened on Saturday, but our pace on Friday was nice. Sunday was a bit of a struggle starting first on the road, but we’ll keep learning, and we have plenty of positives to take into Finland. It’s a big reset for the team this week, and we’ll push on in Finland.”

Summary

What a drive then for Sami and Marko, with their sixth podium of the year and their first victory for them at the top level of this championship. Twelve stage wins gave them the lead they needed including the first nine stages. This was impressive as they didn’t take a stage win in this event last year. This result means that every Toyota driver has taken at least one win this year and has also brought the Finns into third in the championship.

 

For Oliver and Elliott this was well needed result to take second overall after a number of events which had seen them not get a result after little mistakes had big consequences. The second place points along with maximum points from super Sunday has given them a good boost in the standings.

 

Finally, Adrien and Alex scored third and has taken them onto equal points with their world champion teammates in the championship standings. It was a good result for the French duo after a few poor results, and this was a well-deserved result.

The next event is Rally Finland, also known as the 1000 Lakes rally and the Gravel Grand Prix to be held over the 30 July to 2 August.

 

2026 FIA World Rally Championship for Drivers’ Standings
After round 9

1	E. Evans	177
2	T. Katsuta	152
3	S. Pajari	144
4	S. Ogier	139
5	O. Solberg	130
6	T. Neuville	111
7	A. Fourmaux	111
8	E. Lappi	25
9	H. Paddon	21
10	Y. Rossel	20

 

2026 FIA World Rally Championship for Manufacturers’ Standings
After round 9

1	Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally Team	464
2	Hyundai Shell Mobis World Rally Team	308
3	Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally Team 2	157
4	M-Sport Ford World Rally Team	116