WRC 2025 season review: a year where records tumbled

Anthony Peacock – Anthony has 25 years of experience as a journalist and author. In his spare time, he enjoys wearing bobble hats

The World Rally Championship in 2025 stood out for its records. And from the start it was clear that we were in for something very different. Expanded to 14 rounds for the first time since 2008, there were three new rallies: in the Canary Islands, Paraguay and the season finale in Saudi Arabia.

By contrast, the controversial hybrid powertrains were gone – replaced by traditional 1.6-litre turbo units, albeit powered by biofuel – while Hankook took over from Pirelli as the sole tyre supplier. The points system was simplified again after a controversial overhaul in 2024, with full points now awarded at the rally finish (plus Power Stage and Sunday bonuses).

Right from the beginning, those records began to crumble. Sébastien Ogier became the first person to win the season-opening Monte Carlo Rally – in fact, any rally – 10 times (with five different manufacturers). By the end of the season, the 41-year-old Frenchman had clinched his ninth World Rally Championship title to equal Sébastien Loeb’s benchmark: something that only a few years ago Ogier said he had absolutely no interest in doing…

Still, sitting at 67 wins, Ogier has some way to go before reaching his compatriot’s benchmark of 80 victories. More significantly, Ogier became the first part-timer to win the WRC title since Loeb missed the last four rounds of 2006 with a broken collarbone.

The big difference, of course, was that Loeb never meant to break his collarbone; that was just what you might call a racing (or rather mountain bike) incident.

By contrast, the semi-retired Ogier never intended on doing a full season, but after Finland in the summer he saw it might be worth going the distance. In total, he participated in 11 rallies this year, and was on the podium for every single one of them apart from the Central European Rally, where he crashed out while leading. Ogier took six wins during the year to show his team-mates the way; four more than Elfyn Evans, who was runner-up, and three more than Kalle Rovanperä, who eventually finished third in the standings.

And that leads us neatly to another contentious aspect of the 2025 season. The 25-year-old Rovanperä dropped a bombshell by announcing his thinly veiled Formula 1 ambitions in October, which will take him to Japan to race in Super Formula next year, and then maybe Formula 2 in 2027.

The signs were already there. Last year, Rovanperä took a sabbatical to try out a few different things (including a run in a Red Bull F1 car) while doing a part-programme in rallying. When asked back then whether he would still be in rallying full-time if things had been a bit less intense and more social – like they were when his dad Harri was a factory WRC driver – Rovanperä’s answer was unequivocal: “Yes, definitely.”

As a rally driver, he still has what it takes: witness his breathtaking run to 15 wins out of 18 stages on the all-asphalt Rally Islas Canarias, or his mastery of Rally Finland, which this year became the fastest-ever rally in WRC history, with a winning average speed of 80.75mph.

Now, though, the young Finn has an opportunity to rewrite more history by becoming the first WRC champion to make it into Formula 1 full-time; let’s call it the ‘reverse Räikkönen manoeuvre’.

Ott Tänak, the winner of this year’s Acropolis Rally and the fourth-place finisher in the championship, doesn’t have the same chance to make history, but he too is quitting the sport, this time aged 38, to spend more time with his family.

While their motivations are very different, two former champions walking away while a part-timer in his forties wins the title isn’t a great look for rallying.

After taking the WRC runner-up spot five times now, and finishing every rally this year in the top six, the consistency of Evans is beyond doubt – but the Welshman believes he needs to take more risks in order to reverse the trend. Having led the championship after round two in Sweden, and then re-taking that lead following the Central European Rally with just four events to go, this was the closest the Welshman came yet – just four points shy at the finish. But it wasn’t quite enough.

“Kalle Rovanperä announced his thinly veiled F1 ambitions”

Perhaps even more frustrating was Thierry Neuville’s title defence. Despite an influx of new management, Hyundai simply didn’t have an answer to Toyota throughout 2025, winning only two of the 14 rallies. Like the sport as a whole, the South Korean manufacturer is at a crossroads. Right from the beginning of the year there were questions about Hyundai’s long-term commitment to the WRC – and even now, there’s only a deal in place for next year, before the regulations change in 2027.

M-Sport, whose best result in 2025 was fifth place for Grégoire Munster (on the Safari and in Japan) is in a similarly precarious situation – but this is nothing new to them, and as a private team they are more in control of their own destiny. Irish driver Josh McErlean, M-Sport’s new signing this year, actually did better than expected despite having no previous Rally 1 experience, bagging seven points finishes throughout the season.

Yet there was only one team really in it. For Toyota, it was a crushing steamroller: the Japanese marque claimed its fifth consecutive manufacturers’ title (another record) and locked out the top five on Rally Finland (for the first time since Lancia in Portugal 1990).

And here’s where the past reaches out to the future. Because as of next year, we’re treated to the return of the Lancia factory team to the WRC. Yes, it will only be WRC2 – for now at least. But it’s a much-needed good news story in a year that’s been looking for consolation prizes. The new Ypsilon – whose poster boy is Italy’s two-time world champion Miki Biasion – has become one of the fastest-selling rally cars of all time in both Rally 2 and Rally 4 guises, which is a measure of the ravenous public appetite for Lancia’s return. And just maybe we can expect a return to the top tier soon…

The other standout story was Oliver Solberg’s astonishing win in Estonia as a guest driver, which was enough to earn him a permanent place on the Toyota squad in 2026. The 23-year-old claimed the first proper stage on Friday – his maiden stage win at top level – to take a lead he would never lose, with eight more stage wins and a victory margin of more than 25sec by the finish. The result was notable for being Toyota’s 100th WRC win, en route to a breathtaking advantage of 211 points in the final manufacturer rankings.

But their most significant win came three events later, on Rally Chile. On Ogier’s 200th WRC start he claimed the Japanese manufacturer’s 103rd victory – which made Toyota the most successful-ever brand in the history of the rally championship, overtaking Citroën.

The numbers this year were simply staggering. But the backstories behind them even more so.

WRC ’25 standings

Top 25 rally drivers in this year’s championship