Toyota's WRC and WEC double | Six talking points

1. Rovanperä back on top

Kalle Rovanperä shrugged off rolling out of his home rally in Finland back in August by scoring a resounding win on the Acropolis Rally, after Storm Daniel caused extra havoc on what is already one of the toughest events on the WRC calendar. The heavy weather, which hit Greece earlier in the week, caused the cancellation of the shakedown on Thursday, then its aftermath added extra jeopardy once the event proper began that evening.

Running first on the road as championship leader, Rovanperä was left to play second fiddle to part-time Toyota team-mate Sébastien Ogier and Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville who fought for the lead into Saturday. But the rally turned on its head when first Neuville hit trouble, followed later by Ogier. Belgian Neuville hit a hole and incurred terminal front suspension damage on the ninth stage, before Ogier picked up two rear punctures and rear suspension damage on the 12^th stage. Suddenly, Rovanperä was left with a lead of more than two minutes heading into the final leg on Sunday.

2. A second title beckons

The 22-year-old reigning champion claimed the five bonus points for victory on the Power Stage climax to leave him with a final winning margin over team-mate Elfyn Evans of a comfortable 1m31.7sec. Evans had lost more than a minute on Saturday with overheating problems on his Toyota Yaris GR Rally1. Having closed the gap with victory in Finland to 25 points, Evans now lags 33 behind Rovanperä with just three rounds to go.

“Of course, it’s a big relief,” said Rovanperä, who also helped further Toyota’s manufacturers’ championship lead to 91 points over Hyundai. “After a difficult rally in Finland, we needed to come back, even though we never left. A strong performance, starting first and finishing first is quite nice. We had a clever drive and still a good push here [in the Power Stage].”

3. Evans sees off Sordo

But this still represented a great effort from Evans. Dani Sordo held the upper hand going into Sunday, but the Hyundai driver – in his first WRC start since June – couldn’t hold off Evans over the final stages. The Welshman edged the battle for second by 4.2sec.

M-Sport Ford’s Ott Tänak fought back to fourth after incurring a massive 3min 40sec of penalties after leaving a tyre fitting zone late on Friday because of a water pump failure. Esapekka Lappi was fifth for Hyundai and Takamoto Katsuta took sixth for Toyota. Andreas Mikkelsen passed Gus Greensmith in the penultimate stage to take WRC2 honours.

The WRC heads for South America next, for Rally Chile on September 28-October 1.

4. Toyota 1-2 secures WEC crown

Meanwhile at Fuji in Japan, Toyota claimed its fifth successive World Endurance Championship as its pair of GR010 Hybrids claimed a 1-2 on home soil. But it was far from straightforward for the Gazoo Racing crews, who had to wait until nearly the fourth of the six hours before hitting the front in the penultimate WEC round of the season.

At the start the #6 Porsche of Laurens Vanthoor jumped the Toyotas that had locked out the front row as Mike Conway in the #7 GR010 dropped to third behind the #50 Ferrari 499P of Miguel Molina. That became fourth after an early safety car interruption as the #51 Ferrari also got ahead. But Conway and Sébastien Buemi in the #8 passed both Ferraris before the end of the first stint and set off after the leading Porsche.

The Toyota order changed when José María López locked up the #7, allowing Ryo Hirakawa to pass. The Japanese then pulled a great move on Kevin Estre in the Porsche to take the lead just before the four-hour mark, with Brendon Hartley in the #8 soon moving up to second. The deciding moment of the race came in the fifth hour when Kamui Kobayashi moved the #7 past the #8 to take a race-deciding lead.

“It was a tough race for all of us and each of us had moments when it was difficult to overtake,” said Conway in celebration of the victory he shared with Lopez and team principal Kobayashi. “Our pace looked close with Porsche, so we knew we had a real race on our hands. We had to bide our time and once Kamui got clear it was OK.”

The result leaves the #7 crew 15 points down on Buemi, Hartley and Hirakawa in their battle for the drivers’ title with just the Bahrain 8 Hours left to complete the WEC season. The finale takes place on November 4.

5. Porsche stars, Ferrari unhappy

The #6 Porsche, which Vanthoor shared with Estre and André Lotterer, claimed the manufacturer’s second WEC podium of the season, on a weekend when the 963 finally showed the kind of form the world expects from sportscar racing’s greatest car maker.

But while there was reason for optimism at Porsche, Ferrari remained disenchanted. A Balance of Performance change since its epochal Le Mans 24 Hours win in June has left the 499P floundering off the ultimate pace, and it’s no surprise that those in charge at the Prancing Horse aren’t exactly hiding their annoyance. “We wanted the podium here at Fuji but achieved the best result we could,” said endurance racing boss Antonello Coletta after watching his cars finish fourth and fifth. “We know that in Bahrain things could unfold similarly to what we saw at Monza and here in Japan. Unfortunately, after the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the parameters changed and, with them, our possibility of fighting for the titles.”

6. More deflation for Peugeot

The Peugeot 9X8s showed better than expected at Le Mans, but the striking cars had fallen back off the pace at Fuji in a troubling weekend. The pair were classified seventh and eighth, behind the customer Porsche 963 run by Jota – which survived an awkward clash with its sister LMP2 car! The second customer 963 was ninth as Proton continues to get up to speed with its new Hypercar, while Cadillac endured a trying day when its solo entry lost a wheel.

WRT’s crew of Robert Kubica, Louis Deletraz and Rui Andrade took its second class win of the 2023 WEC and took a step closer to winning the LMP2 title, while Ferrari at least claimed the GTE-Am victory courtesy of the AF Corse entry helmed by Davide Rigon, Francesco Castellaci and Thomas Flohr, despite the last-named running wide in the second hour and being hit by Ben Keating’s Corvette. The American received a monster 30-second stop-go penalty for the incident.

Photography courtesy of Motorsport Images