After snow, ice and mud, WRC’s all-Toyota title battle picks up the pace on Rally Croatia’s asphalt

After three different winners from three very different opening rounds of the 2026 FIA World Rally Championship, Rally Croatia marks the first pure asphalt event of the year and the start of a crucial new phase in what’s been an all-Toyota title fight so far title.

Toyota Gazoo Racing (above, in pre-Croatia testing) has dominated the season so far, with Oliver Solberg winning on the snow and slush of the Monte Carlo Rally (above), Elfyn Evans taking the victory on a frozen Rally Sweden, and Takamoto Katsuta earning his first WRC win in the mud of Safari Rally Kenya.

In a to-and-fro contest, Evans heads the WRC drivers’ standing on 66 points, eight clear of Solberg, with Katsuta a further three points behind. But Croatia’s fourth of 14 rounds offers a potential opportunity for one of the trio of GR Yaris Rally1 drivers to start putting some space between themselves and their Toyota teammates.

Rally Croatia is back after a one-year absence, but with a very different look and feel. It’s shifted its base from Zagreb to Rijeka and the Grobnik Circuit, a venue that hosted the Yugoslavian Motorcycle Grand Prix from 1978 to 1990, and introduced a route that’s more than 75 percent new compared with its last WRC appearance in 2024.

Evans has strong track record in Croatia, winning the event in 2023 and finishing runner-up by just 0.6s on its WRC debut in 2021. Despite posting his first retirement in 19 starts last time out in Kenya, the Welshman still salvaged six points on Super Sunday and retained his championship lead heading into the sealed-surface fixture.

“Croatia has been a good rally for us in the past, so it’s nice to be going back there,” he said. “It’s always been a rally with a lot of surface changes and with that a lot of grip changes, but there are more unknowns this year with the event moving toward the coast. We will have to see what the new stages are like when we get there, and write plenty of new pace notes during the recce.”

Evans also hinted at the wider challenge facing teams as Croatia opens a run of back-to-back asphalt rallies, with preparations already needing to take Rally Canary Isles into account in two weeks’ time.

“In our test we had quite wet and muddy conditions, which could be representative of what we’ll face in the rally,” he noted, “but we were also having to think ahead towards the Canaries with some parts linked between the two rallies. Like always, we aim to fight for the best result possible.”

Solberg, who’s taking in his first full season as a Toyota Rally1 driver, remains firmly in contention after showing strong pace in Kenya before alternator failure halted his rally, while Katsuta heads to Croatia full of confidence following his breakthrough maiden WRC victory on the African classic. The Japanese driver has posted top-six finishes on every edition of Croatia Rally in the WRC and has four stage wins at the event.

Takamoto Katsuta heads to Croatia off the back of a Safari Rally victory (above) – the first WRC win for the Japanese Toyota driver.

Toyota’s lineup is further strengthened by Sami Pajari, who arrives in Rijeka on the back of consecutive podium finishes. A third-place finish on last year’s Rally Japan showed the Finnish driver’s chops on asphalt, so expect to see him mixing it with his teammates.

Hyundai’s challenge is led by Adrien Fourmaux, who scored both his and the team’s first podium of the season in Kenya and sits fourth in points, just eight back from Katsuta. Thierry Neuville returns to an event that has repeatedly slipped from his grasp, despite several strong performances. Hayden Paddon completes a trio of Hyundai i20 N Rally1 entries for his second start of the season, the New Zealander making his Croatia Rally debut.

Completing the Rally1 runners, M-Sport Ford fields Jon Armstrong and Josh McErlean. Armstrong returns to the country where he won last year’s FIA European Rally Championship (ERC) finale, although none of the stages used in 2025 feature on this year’s route, while M-Sport sophomore McErlean faces Croatia for the first time in his Puma Rally1.

Jon Armstrong won Croatia’s European Rally Championship finale last year (above) and returns as an M-Sport Ford WRC Rally1 rookie.

In WRC2, the second tier of international rallying, a stacked field of Rally2 machinery includes a second appearance for Lancia’s two-car factory effort. The Italian marque showed its potential in its WRC return on the Monte Carlo season-opener and drivers Nikolay Gryazin and Yohan Rossel will be looking to put strong finishes on the board in Croatia.

Lancia’s opposition includes Rossel’s brother, Monte Carlo class winner Leo, in a 2C Junior Team Citroen C3, Sweden WRC2 winner Roope Korhonen in a GR Yaris Rally2, and asphalt ace Eric Camilli’s Skoda Fabia RS. 

The rally takes in 20 special stages and 186.6 competitive miles of narrow, technical roads and surface changes in the Istria, Karlovac and Primorje-Gorski Kotar regions. Leg one begins Friday, April 10, with crews set to tackle eight special stages around Istria totaling 78.83 miles. Saturday’s second leg adds eight more, totaling 72.05 miles, with Sunday’s four stages and 35.7 miles on the Adriatic coast completing perhaps the toughest all-asphalt counter of the season.

The challenge is only heightened by the character of the new-look route, which climbs from the Adriatic coast to more than 4,000ft above sea level on stages such as 10.1-mile Platak, where rapidly changing weather could become a factor.

Catch WRC action from all rounds of the 2026 FIA World Rally Championship on RACER Network and the RACER+ App. Next up, the latest WRC Magazine Show episode, setting the scene for Rally Croatia, premieres Thursday, April 9 at 10.30pm ET on the RACER Network.

And tune in on Monday, April 13 at 9.00PM ET for full highlights from Rally Croatia. It’s the WRC’s first all-asphalt round of the season, so get set for high-speed action on the coastal roads and mountain passes around host-city Rijeka.

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