Oliver Solberg has secured a stunning victory on Rallye Monte-Carlo, leading Elfyn Evans and Sébastien Ogier in a TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team 1-2-3 on a hugely challenging edition of the legendary event.
Beginning their first season in the TGR-WRT Rally1 line-up in the most spectacular style, Solberg and co-driver Elliott Edmondson have now claimed two wins from their first two starts in the GR YARIS Rally1 car following their victory on debut at last year’s Rally Estonia.
Solberg led the rally from the second stage on Thursday evening, and the 24-year-old becomes the youngest ever winner of Rallye Monte-Carlo in the modern era – just under a year younger than Ogier was when he scored the first of his 10 wins back in 2009. Solberg is also the first member of his famous rallying family to win the event.
The result is the first podium lockout by a single manufacturer on the event since 2015, and the first time that Toyota has achieved the feat. Solberg’s victory is the seventh achieved with a Toyota car.
While Rallye Monte-Carlo is famed for winter weather conditions on the roads of the French Alps, this year’s edition was the most demanding for many years. Most of the stages were covered in a combination of snow, ice, rain and mud, with very little in the way of dry asphalt.
Solberg had never finished higher than 14th in six previous starts on the event, but appeared confident and relaxed at the wheel of his GR YARIS Rally1. The conditions brought many potential pitfalls, and Solberg did dramatically slide off the road in one stage on Saturday, only to navigate his way back out of a field and still win the stage.
Sunday’s final leg in the mountains above Monaco brought more challenging ice and snow conditions, including over the iconic Col de Turini, and Solberg would have a couple more wide moments but he eventually secured the win by 51.8 seconds.
Evans and co-driver Scott Martin finished second to score their fifth Rallye Monte-Carlo podiums from seven attempts with TGR-WRT. They also won the rally-ending Power Stage by 6.5s over Solberg, and came second in the Super Sunday classification (as the quickest Rally1 crew) to start the season with a strong points haul.
Ogier, co-driven by Vincent Landais, was in a close fight with Evans for much of the rally before eventually settling for his 15th podium from 17 Rallye Monte-Carlo starts, as well as going third-fastest in the Power Stage.
Takamoto Katsuta was delayed on Friday by tyre damage in two stages and a loss of power steering following an impact, but recovered well to finish seventh with some strong stage times. Sami Pajari’s car had to be retired due to damage sustained in an accident on Saturday in slippery, slushy conditions.
TGR WRC Challenge Program driver Yuki Yamamoto was running sixth in class in his GR Yaris Rally2 car on his second Monte-Carlo start, until having to retire with damage in Sunday’s second stage.
Quotes:
Akio Toyoda (TGR-WRT Chairman)
“Oliver and Elliott, congratulations on your victory! I never thought that I would be able to say congratulations to you for the second time so soon. I am happy to have such reliable team-mates join the TOYOTA GAZOO Racing WRT family.
I also want to thank Elfyn/Scott and Seb/Vincent for making a 1-2-3 finish in this season opener. As drivers who also want to win, I’m sure Elfyn and Seb felt some frustration, but I really appreciate them for always driving so consistently and supporting the team.
I’m also happy that we had Jari-Matti back on-site as Team Principal for the first time after a while. He always says, “I want to be a driver! I want to drive!”, but I heard he jokingly said this time, “I’m glad I’m the team principal and not a driver.” This shows how tough this year’s Monte-Carlo conditions were, even making Jari-Matti feel that way.
I want to thank everyone on the team for achieving the best possible results on such difficult roads and conditions. I believe we will face many tough situations this season as well. Let’s continue making ever-better cars on various roads.”
Jari-Matti Latvala (Team Principal)
“To have three of our crews filling the podium at Rallye Monte-Carlo is something very special. It’s the most difficult rally in the championship and this edition was extremely hard. The conditions were horrendous in places, and I’m glad for once that I wasn’t driving myself. Considering how tough it was, I think the team has done an amazing job to make this result possible. It’s great to have a new winner of this event in Oliver Solberg, whose performance was incredible against the more experienced drivers. He had some moments, as most of the drivers did, but it always takes luck as well as skill to win this rally, and this is an incredible start for him with our team.”
Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“This is a fantastic result for the team and a huge congratulations to Oliver and Elliott on an amazing performance. Of course, it would have been nice to fight for the win but we just didn’t have what it took to match them here this weekend. It’s definitely been the toughest Rallye Monte-Carlo of my career. There have been others that have been difficult, but I think the combination of everything made it a really challenging weekend. Even today there was no break from the trickiness, and to finish with good points on Sunday is good for us.”
Sébastien Ogier (Driver car 1)
“Honestly I’m happy to have this podium finish at the end of a very demanding rally. Of course, here at Rallye Monte-Carlo I have got used to being on the top step, but Oliver was fantastic this weekend and fully deserves his win; congratulations mate. It’s good for the championship to have someone new and fresh winning rallies, and I’m looking forward to fight with him more in the future. To lock out the top three for the team is another very positive start to the season, so I’m smiling today.”
Oliver Solberg (Driver car 99)
“To win Rallye Monte-Carlo is an incredible result and a dream come true, and probably the craziest thing I’ve done in my life. I just want to say a big thank you to the team, for their belief in making me a factory driver. It’s our second rally together and our second win. The team has been working so well to get me comfortable in the car on all surfaces and in all conditions. When the conditions were tricky, I tried to push on the snow and ice, and I think that’s where I was able to make the difference. A 1-2-3 for the team is also a fantastic start to the season, especially for the manufacturers’ championship.”
Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“I’m happy to reach the finish of this rally. I think most of the drivers have never seen such a difficult Rallye Monte-Carlo for the whole event. It was very difficult every day, with mixed conditions that were changing a lot and were not easy to follow and anticipate. I can’t be too happy with this rally overall, but at least we could finish and score some points. We have some things to look at to see why I was struggling sometimes, but the next rally in Sweden is totally different and I’m looking forward to it.”
Yuki Yamamoto (Driver WRC Challenge Program GEN2)
“This was probably the most difficult rally I’ve ever done. We were trying to be patient and not take unnecessary risks. I think it was going well in terms of gaining experience until the final day; there was full snow at the top of the Col de Turini and then on the downhill, there was a drier asphalt place where I accelerated more than necessary because there was grip, then when I braked there was black ice. I locked up and stalled the engine and couldn’t stop the car. That was a disappointing finish, but I think there are positives to take away and good progress compared to this event last year.”
PROVISIONAL FINAL CLASSIFICATION, RALLYE MONTE-CARLO
1 Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) 4h24m59.0s
2 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +51.8s
3 Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +2m02.2s
4 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +5m59.3s
5 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +10m29.8s
6 Léo Rossel/Guillaume Mercoiret (Citroën C3 Rally2) +12m58.4s
7 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +13m05.4s
8 Roberto Daprà/Luca Guglielmetti (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) +15m07.9s
9 Arthur Pelamourgues/Bastien Pouget (Hyundai i20 N Rally2) +18m09.4s
10 Eric Camilli/Thibault de la Haye (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) +18m36.4s
Retired Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1)
(Results as of 17:00 on Sunday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)
2026 FIA World Rally Championship for drivers after round 1:
1 Oliver Solberg 30 points
2 Elfyn Evans 26
3 Sébastien Ogier 18
4 Adrien Fourmaux 17
5 Thierry Neuville 10
6 Léo Rossel 8
7 Takamoto Katsuta 6
8 Yohan Rossel 6
9 Roberto Daprà 4
10 Arthur Pelamourgues 2
2026 FIA World Rally Championship for manufacturers after round 1:
1 TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team 59 points
2 Hyundai Shell Mobis World Rally Team 35
What’s next?
Rally Sweden (February 12-15) is the only full winter event of the season held on snow and ice. Metal studs inserted into the tyres bite into the surface to provide grip and allow for some of the highest speeds of the year.
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