World Rally Championship: Will it be fifth time lucky for Elfyn Evans?

The former Seat and Ford driver is part of a Toyota team that have already won the Manufacturers’ World Championship for the fifth year in a row.

And as so often happens in motorsport, Evans’ team-mates are also his closest rivals.

Rovanpera is the youngest ever world champion after winning back-to-back championships in 2022 and 2023.

Now 25 and in his final season before leaving WRC for new challenges, the Finnish driver has already won three rallies this year and will be ready to pounce on any mistakes from his team-mate.

Ogier, 41, is looking to tie Sebastien Loeb’s record of nine WRC titles. The Frenchman has won five rallies this season and led the championship before a crash at last month’s Central European Rally handed the advantage back to the Welshman.

Despite the competition, Evans says relationships are good.

“We all get on fairly well in the team,” he explained.

“Rallying is quite unique in that we’re racing against the clock rather than physically against each other on track.

“That normally means we get on a bit better in the background and the team has a very good atmosphere on the whole.

“Everything is shared among the drivers, so everything is very open and we tend to try and race it out on the stages, so normally we get on pretty well.”

Evans has been competing against the best of the best for years. If he is able to join his team-mates as a world champion the achievement will be monumental.

Fourteen years after his first WRC race he is as close as he has ever been to glory.

Evans will be hoping a journey that started in Dolgellau could have the greatest of endings in Jeddah via Japan.