Pajari Leads Rally Paraguay After Brutal Opening Day Claims Ogier, Neuville and Katsuta
Sami Pajari leads Rally Paraguay after a brutal opening day that retired three of the championship's biggest names and left the overall standings picture largely intact. The Toyota driver, on a two-rally winning streak, sits 11.9 seconds clear of New Zealand's Hayden Paddon, with championship leader Elfyn Evans third BBC Sport.
Pajari arrived in Paraguay off victories in Estonia and his home rally in Finland. Evans, his Toyota team-mate, held a 30-point championship lead before the weekend began. So a Pajari win on Sunday would eat into that margin with the season deep into its run.
The day belonged as much to attrition as to speed. Three drivers retired across the opening eight stages. Toyota's Takamoto Katsuta and co-driver Aaron Johnston crashed on the very first test, the damage heavy enough to end their day. Thierry Neuville broke his Hyundai's suspension on the second pass and stopped. Sébastien Ogier attempted a makeshift suspension repair on his Toyota, but it failed on stage three and he was out BBC Sport.
Up front, the lead changed hands repeatedly. Paddon, driving a part-time programme for Hyundai, was leading his first World Rally Championship event since 2018 before a puncture dropped him back. Evans then moved ahead on stage six, only for a tyre delamination — the tread peeling off the carcass of a Hankook rubber — on the following stage to hand the advantage to Pajari.
Hayden Paddon is a name that will resonate with rally followers. The New Zealander spent years as a Hyundai works driver and came agonisingly close to a maiden WRC win in Poland in 2016. To be fighting at the front on a part-time entry, eight years after his last rally lead, is a testament to his persistence.
Further back, Adrien Fourmaux held fourth in his Hyundai, with M-Sport Ford's Josh McErlean fifth. McErlean, co-driven by Eoin Treacy in the #55 Ford Puma Rally1, had climbed as high as second before a puncture on the penultimate stage of the day cost him time BBC Sport. His M-Sport team-mate Jon Armstrong suffered tyre and brake troubles that dropped him down the order. Toyota's Oliver Solberg lost more than four minutes to a technical issue.
Rally Paraguay is a new addition to the WRC calendar, based in the city of Encarnación near the Argentine border. The stages combine smooth red-earth surfaces with technical sections cut through dense forest WRC.com. The event runs from 27 to 30 August.
The rally continues Saturday with more forest stages before Sunday's conclusion. Pajari's lead is slender, Paddon is on a charge, and Evans holds a comfortable championship buffer — but on roads that have already caught out Ogier, Neuville and Katsuta, nothing is guaranteed.
