Hayden Paddon will return to the M-Sport Ford team for two more World Rally Championship appearances later in the 2019 season. The former Hyundai driver will compete in a Ford Fiesta R5 at next month’s Rally GB before stepping up to a Fiesta WRC for the season-closing Rally Australia. Paddon’s new deal comes after he

M-Sport Ford World Rally Championship team boss Malcolm Wilson feels it would be “crazy” to let Elfyn Evans or Teemu Suninen go, despite his pursuit of Ott Tanak for 2020. Evans and Suninen have been M-Sport’s main line-up this year after Sebastien Ogier’s exit for Citroen, though Evans will end up missing three WRC rounds

Toyota World Rally Championship team boss Tommi Makinen has played down talks that he could attempt to lure Dani Sordo to his squad for 2020. Makinen spoke positively about Hyundai driver Sordo during the recent Rally Germany, amid speculation linking the 36-year-old to a deal with Toyota. Sordo has not completed a full WRC season

M-Sport believes its current driver Teemu Suninen can mature into as strong a World Rally Championship contender as points leader Ott Tanak. Malcolm Wilson’s team famously dropped Tanak from its lead line-up twice during his erratic early years with the team, before he blossomed into a winner in 2017. He then left for Toyota, where

Hyundai has confirmed Craig Breen will get another shot in its factory World Rally Championship line-up for Rally GB next month. Breen made his debut with Hyundai at Rally Finland in August, and ran in the top five for much of the event before dropping to seventh at the finish to promote his championship challenging

M-Sport Ford’s Elfyn Evans will miss a third round of the World Rally Championship due to his back injury, and not return until his home event in Britain in October. Evans sustained the injury in a bad landing from a jump when contesting the non-championship Rally Estonia in July. He has already missed the Finnish

The Hyundai World Rally Championship team has to stop relying on its rivals to falter, says team boss Andrea Adamo as he hit out at a “wasted” Rally Germany opportunity. Dani Sordo was comfortably in the fight for a podium on last weekend’s event before a gearbox issue halted his progress on the Friday, forcing

Malcolm Wilson has not given up on re-signing Ott Tanak from Toyota, but says Ford’s involvement will be key to bringing the World Rally Championship leader back to M-Sport. Tanak has recently looked likely to re-sign with Toyota following the end of his current contract with the team in 2019. But Wilson met with Tanak

Toyota World Rally Championship team principal Tommi Makinen has promised to investigate the brake issue that affected the final day of Ott Tanak’s Rally Germany victory last weekend. The Yaris WRC has come in for criticism over reliability, most notably when Tanak lost Rally Italy victory due to a steering problem and technical problems has

World Rally Championship leader Ott Tanak hopes Toyota’s 1-2-3 Rally Germany finish will help motivate his team to “push forward” after “tension” following Rally Italy earlier this season. Tanak dropped from the lead to fifth on the last stage in Sardinia, pictured below, – handing victory to Hyundai’s Dani Sordo – following a steering problem

Ott Tanak’s World Rally Championship lead has been extended to 35 points over Thierry Neuville after recording a third successive Rally Germany victory for Toyota. Tanak led a clean sweep of the podium for the Japanese marque, with Kris Meeke coming home 20.8s in arrears, with Jari-Matti Latvala third. Neuville salvaged finished behind Hyundai team-mate

Toyota’s Ott Tanak is within touching distance of a fourth World Rally Championship victory in five outings ahead of the final stage of Rally Germany. Tanak maintained his overnight lead of 25.1 seconds over team-mate Kris Meeke after taking it easy on the passes through Grafschaft and Dhrontal on Sunday morning. The third Toyota of

Ott Tanak leads a Toyota one-two-three ahead of Sunday’s final Rally Germany stages, as his World Rally Championship rivals Thierry Neuville and Sebastien Ogier both punctured on the Panzerplatte test. Hyundai driver Neuville and Tanak had been embroiled in an intense battle for the lead on Friday that continued into Saturday morning. Neuville began Saturday

Thierry Neuville’s hopes of beating Toyota’s Ott Tanak to Rally Germany victory and the World Rally Championship title were dealt a major blow by a puncture on the Panzerplatte stage. A number of drivers suffered punctures on the stage during the pre-event recce, which crews use to make pace notes, but Neuville was the only

World Rally Championship points leader Ott Tanak continues to lead Rally Germany for Toyota as Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville was left to rue a minor mistake on Saturday morning’s second stage. Neuville had chopped 1.3 seconds out of Tanak on the first run of Freisen to trim the Toyota’s overall advantage to 1.5s. But he overcooked

The spectator who fell around five metres onto a stage and narrowly avoided being hit by Citroen’s Mads Ostberg is reportedly uninjured. On SS5 of Rally Germany, the second running of the 19.44kmh Stein und Wein stage, the spectator fell off a short wall “head first” onto the stage on a straight section, just as

Ott Tanak and Thierry Neuville remain extremely closely-matched at the head of the Rally Germany order at the end of Friday’s stages. Their afternoon battle replicated their morning form – Neuville quickest on the opening stage then World Rally Championship leader Tanak fighting back on the next two. Hyundai driver Neuville managed to halve Tanak’s

Ott Tanak inched into an early Rally Germany lead over Thierry Neuville, as the pair left their World Rally Championship rivals trailing on Friday morning. Hyundai driver Neuville had snatched first place from Thursday evening pacesetter Tanak’s Toyota by going quickest on the opening Stein und Wein stage, taking a 0.7-second lead. But Tanak –

World Rally Championship points’ leader Ott Tanak beat his title rivals on the first stage of Rally Germany to lead overnight, the three title contenders split by one second. The first stage offered a rare opportunity for crews to tackle a representative road to open the rally – having also used the test on shakedown

Toyota has made changes to the positioning of the rear wing on its Yaris WRC, following a World Rally Championship rules clarification by the FIA. During the Rally Finland weekend, the FIA said a clarification of rear wing measurements was necessary, while stressing that no car in the championship was running illegally. Toyota’s rear wing

Opel has launched what it believes is the first rally championship for electric cars, replacing its flagship junior series with the ADAC Opel e-Rally Cup for the Corsa-e from 2020. The ADAC Opel Rallye Cup – which uses the marque’s Adam model – has helped to produce a number of rally talents including WRC 2

Two-time Formula 1 champion Fernando Alonso says climbing the Namibia dunes for the first time with the Toyota Hilux was “shocking”, as his Dakar Rally preparation programme began in earnest. Alonso has been testing the Hilux in Namibia since Tuesday, following Toyota’s announcement that he would embark on a rally-raid initiation programme with the view

Olympic legend, and accomplished racer, Sir Chris Hoy will celebrate his childhood hero by driving Colin McRae’s 1996 Subaru Impreza during the build-up to the World Rally Championship’s Rally GB. Hoy will take to the WRC event’s new Oulton Park special stage in the Impreza that McRae took to victory in Spain in 1996. The

Citroen is hopeful that an engine upgrade and a better understanding of its asphalt performance will give Sebastien Ogier the chance to fight for victory on Rally Germany. A strong start to the 2019 season where Ogier’s return to Citroen after seven seasons away yielded victories in two of the first three rounds aboard the

Hyundai World Rally Championship driver Thierry Neuville wants to contest a 24-hour event in a GT3 car, after making a winning circuit racing debut in TCR Germany last weekend. Neuville took pole position, fastest lap, a race win and led every lap at the Nurburgring, in a Hyundai i30 N TCR reserved for guest drivers.

Toyota’s Ott Tanak says it will be a “big challenge” to repeat last year’s Rally Germany victory, which was “one of the most difficult” in his World Rally Championship career. Rally Finland winner last time out, Tanak is chasing a third successive win in Germany this weekend, a feat last achieved by Sebastien Loeb in

Fernando Alonso and Toyota Gazoo Racing have unveiled the first stages of the preparation programe for the two-time Formula 1 world champion’s planned Dakar Rally debut in 2020. Alonso sampled Toyota’s Hilux car in the Kalahari Desert back in March, and will now embark on a much more extensive rally raid training programme with the

World Rally Championship event winner Hayden Paddon’s team is developing a world-leading all-electric Hyundai Kona EV rally car. The car is in the design stage now and is expected to be testing for the first time in April 2020. The aim is for the Kona EV to be the first rally car capable of completing

Chris Ingram has missed out on the ERC1 Junior title by only 0.3s on the Barum Rally, despite taking the lead of the European Rally Championship outright. Ingram was locked in an intense battle with fellow Skoda Fabia R5 driver Filip Mares, the pair swapping places several times throughout the rally while battling for class

Hyundai World Rally Championship driver Dani Sordo has suggested he will rent a car for Rally Spain if he is not picked by the works team for his home event. Sordo took a surprise second WRC victory earlier this year in Sardinia nearly six years after his first WRC win. But the fact that he