WRC 2025 result after Round 2: Rally Sweden

Toyota Gazoo Racing continued its FIA World Rally Championship campaign with Elfyn Evans and Takamoto Katsuta delivering a thrilling finish and another maximum score for the team as they achieved a one-two result on Rally Sweden – one of the most exciting in the event’s history. How did this WRC 2025 result play out? Read on as we review each day’s activities.

WRC 2025 result: Rally Sweden

Considered the WRC’s only pure winter event, Rally Sweden was the scene of Toyota Gazoo Racing’s first ever victory in 2017, when current team principal Jari-Matti Latvala was behind the wheel. Now hosted further north – closer to the Arctic Circle than to the capital city Stockholm – to ensure extreme winter conditions, the stages require metal-studded tyres to bite into the frozen surfaces. Yet this assisted grip also delivers some of the highest speeds and most dramatic racing of the entire year, where drivers dare to ‘lean’ their cars against the snowbanks at the sides of the roads to carry more speed through corners.

Toyota entered five GR Yaris Rally1 cars into the event, with Elfyn Evans leading the fight for the drivers’ title. Also present was Kalle Kalle Rovanperä, Takamoto Katsuta and Sami Pajari. The fifth car was given to Lorenzo Bertelli, who took part through the team’s customer programme.

Day 1

The pre-event shakedown took place on Thursday morning in the host city of Umeå, where temperatures were well below freezing. Running first on the road as the leading championship contender, Evans set an early lead but by the end of the third pass settled for a more comfortable third fastest.

This was followed in the evening by the opening competitive stage, a 3.2-mile sprint through fast forest roads leading to a more technical spectator arena. Despite the lack of natural light and braking points that were difficult to judge, Evans led the way to record the best time. Team-mate Rovanperä finished half a second behind, while Katsuta and Pajari were just over five seconds back in sixth and seventh places respectively.

Day 2

Day two was the longest of the event and consisted of 77 competitive miles across seven stages. As such, tyre management played a crucial role as drivers had to learn the characteristics of the new Hankook studded tyres as they clawed into the solid ice base.

Already leading after the previous night’s opening stage, Evans (below) added to his advantage by winning the morning’s first test and securing second quickest in the following two stages. By the end of the morning loop the Welshman was 1.9 seconds ahead of his nearest rival. Evans was more disadvantaged in the afternoon, however, as he created new lines for others to follow but bounced back in stage six to reclaim the lead. He then ended the day with another win around the sprint course.

Katsuta was also strong in the morning but even better in the afternoon, where he secured a superb stage win. He concluded the day just 0.6 seconds off Evans’s pace. Meanwhile, Rovanperä and Pajari had their individual tyre-related struggles and finished the day in sixth and ninth positions.

WRC 2025 result: Day 3

Today’s itinerary was shorter than day two’s with 60 competitive miles tackled across seven stages. Pace at the front remained incredibly high, with less than ten seconds covering the top five heading into the day and the gap between Evans and Katsuta as low as 0.1 seconds after the morning’s opening stage.

Evans responded with a win in the subsequent test, and by the time he won the afternoon’s second pass of the same stage he had accumulated an 8.6 second lead, assisted, somewhat unfortunately, by a brief overshoot for Katsuta in the preceding stage. Evans went on to have his own sideways moment in stage 14, narrowly escaping what would have been a nasty encounter with a snowbank. A stall in a junction on the evening’s run through the Umeå sprint further cut the Welshman’s lead. Nevertheless, Evans and Katsuta maintained their formidable one-two positions.

Rovanperä had a much stronger day three. The Finn won the first stage and remained one of the fastest drivers across the day, which resulted in him climbing to fifth position overall. Rally1 rookie Pajari also continued to make progress as he climbed to seventh.

Day 4

After their high-paced battled through day three, Evans entered the final day just three seconds ahead of second-placed Katsuta, who himself was roughly the same time ahead of the crew in third. Katsuta and co-driver Aaron Johnston were quickest out of the traps in the morning and snatched the lead, only for Evans to respond emphatically on the second pass and finish an incredible 6.7 seconds faster than anybody else.

Defending an advantage of 3.7 seconds into the rally-ending Power Stage, Evans secured victory in style as he edged Katsuta to the best time by just 0.2 seconds and topped the Super Sunday classification by 0.8 seconds. His overall winning margin of 3.8 seconds was the narrowest in Rally Sweden history.

This conclusion marked the tenth WRC victory for Evans and his second in Sweden, exactly five years to the day since his first ever win for Toyota on the same event. Taking a maximum score of 35 points, Evans moves into a 28-point lead in the drivers’ championship. Meanwhile, this event marked Toyota’s 95th WRC win. It not only extends our lead in the manufacturer standings to 48 points but moves us into second place in the all-time list of most successful WRC manufacturers.

WRC 2025 result in Round 2: Rally Sweden

WRC 2025 championship standings: drivers and co-drivers

WRC 2025 championship standings: manufacturers

WRC 2025: Where next?

The third round of the WRC 2025 calendar is the legendary Safari Rally Kenya. The event takes place on 20-23 March and is the only African round of the season. Since returning to the championship in 2021, it provides gruelling conditions on rough, rocky roads as well as high speeds across open plains.

Learn more: How did last year’s WRC end for Toyota?