TOYOTA Gazoo Racing World Rally Team ended a challenging Rally Sweden on a high with Elfyn Evans scoring a strong haul of points towards the championship after setting the pace on the final day and claiming second overall.

The event was won by Esapekka Lappi and Janne Ferm, their first FIA World Rally Championship victory since 2017. Driving a Hyundai i20 N Rally1 on Pirelli tyres, the Finns maintained their comfortable overnight advantage to complete their first outing of 2024 in style.

The result made it back-to-back victories for the Hyundai Shell Mobis World Rally Team, which also won the season-opening Rallye Monte-Carlo last month.

It was a strong recovery for Evans after he was forced to run first on the road and plough through deep snow on Friday afternoon.

Having been just 1.9 seconds from the eventual winner during mid-day service, the extreme conditions left him 1m50s from the lead at the end of the day.

Having moved up from fifth to third on Saturday morning, Evans then stormed into second place on Sunday’s opening stage. He was fastest in the subsequent second pass of that stage, and finished a close second in the rally-ending Power Stage.

That was enough to top the ‘Super Sunday’ classification, giving he and co-driver Scott Martin a total of 24 points from the weekend – more than any other crew.

Evans’ team-mates Kalle Rovanperä and Takamoto Katsuta fought for the rally lead before they fell victim to the snowbanks that line the stages.

Rovanperä held the early lead until contact with a snow bank in SS4 on Friday caused radiator damage.

He restarted on Saturday and targeted manufacturers’ points on Sunday, where he was second-quickest to Evans across the day and fastest by just 0.039s in the Power Stage.

The team therefore took the maximum 22 points available on Sunday and remains jointly in the lead of the manufacturer’s’ championship after two rounds.

Dinas Mawddwy’s Evans said: “It’s been a very up-and-down weekend. It wasn’t looking so good on Friday when we had a difficult job with our road position.

“But we managed to get through it which I think was important, and gave us the opportunity to climb back up the leaderboard.

“When conditions were suiting us, our pace was quite OK and today we managed get some good points in the end.

“I think we probably should have won the Power Stage, but made a couple of mistakes at the end. Still, from where we were earlier in the weekend and to come out of it with a good haul of points, I think we can be reasonably happy.”

Up next is the legendary Safari Rally Kenya – the only African round of the WRC. It has been moved forward from June to an earlier date of 28-31 March for 2024. Since returning to the schedule in 2021, the event continues to provide gruelling conditions on rough and rocky roads as well as high speeds across open plains.