Toyota shines at Croatia Rally

Toyota’s lineup flipped in a few kilometers on Saturday morning in Croatia: Takamoto Katsuta briefly grabbed second place on Special Stage 10, then Thierry Neuville hit back on Special Stage 11, while Sami Pajari kept the overall lead for Toyota at midday service. By the end of the loop, Pajari led by 12.4 seconds, Neuville was second, and Katsuta was third at 25.1 seconds. (wrc.com) That shuffle matters because a rally is not one long race but 20 separate timed sprints called special stages, with every second added together like a running stopwatch. Croatia Rally 2026 runs from April 9 to April 12 with 20 stages, and the event returned to the World Rally Championship calendar after sitting out 2025. (fia.com) (wrc.com) Croatia is the first pure asphalt round of the 2026 season, so the surface behaves more like a public mountain road than a gravel track. The 2026 route is more than 75 percent new, the rally base moved from Zagreb to Rijeka, and the service park is now at Grobnik Circuit on the Adriatic coast. (wrc.com 1) (wrc.com 2) Those roads are tricky because grip changes corner by corner when drivers cut across the inside and drag dirt, leaves, and stones onto the racing line. World Rally Championship officials described Saturday’s roads as littered with leaves, dirt, and unpredictable grip, and Friday’s new Istria stages already produced crashes for Elfyn Evans and Oliver Solberg. (wrc.com 1) (wrc.com 2) Friday is why Toyota’s internal order changed so sharply. Evans arrived in Croatia leading the championship on 66 points and won Special Stage 1 and Special Stage 2 to open a 15.8-second gap, but he crashed out on Special Stage 3 after carrying too much speed into a right-hander. (wrc.com 1) (wrc.com 2) Oliver Solberg, another Toyota driver, was gone even earlier. He stranded his Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 on the opening stage after clipping a bank about five kilometers in, which left Pajari and Katsuta as Toyota’s main hopes for the overall win on Friday night. (wrc.com) (fia.com) Pajari took that opening and did the hard part: he stayed clean while others made mistakes. He finished Friday 13.7 seconds ahead of Neuville, with Katsuta only 0.9 seconds further back in third, giving Toyota two of the top three places heading into Saturday. (wrc.com) (fia.com) Saturday morning tightened that fight even more. Katsuta beat Neuville by 4.8 seconds on Special Stage 10, Ravna Gora–Skrad, to move into second overall by 1.2 seconds before Neuville crushed the next test by 16.9 seconds over Katsuta and jumped back ahead. (wrc.com) That is where team tactics start to creep in. Toyota now has Pajari protecting a lead, Katsuta balancing speed against risk after saying his priority was to bring the car home, and Evans plus Solberg reduced to stage wins after restarting outside the overall fight. (wrc.com) There is also a championship angle under the hood of every split time. Toyota came into Croatia leading the manufacturers’ standings on 157 points to Hyundai’s 114, and Katsuta came in only three points behind Solberg after his first World Rally Championship win in Kenya. (wrc.com) (wrc.com) So the story in Croatia is not just that Toyota has cars near the front. It is that one Toyota driver, Pajari, is trying to convert his first overnight World Rally Championship lead into a win, while another, Katsuta, is close enough to shape the podium fight every time the road gets cleaner or dirtier over the remaining stages. (wrc.com) (wrc.com)