The other is that at least Toyota is stacked with unbelievable drivers, because the only competition they have in this championship right now is amongst themselves.

Canarias is a pavement rally with endless awesome views, so it’s a good place to jump in for people who like road racing. That also means they’re pushing their asses off, and there were some pretty serious over-the-limit moments in this event. Indeed, it was decided by one. The old champ, Seb Ogier, was in classic form, but young Oliver Solberg was coming for him, trying to revive the miracle season it looked like he would have early on. On the penultimate stage, Solberg was in the barrier, and that sealed it for Ogier.

Previous Toyota hot-streak driver Takamoto Katsuta won the populist superspecial stage in the Gran Canaria football stadium, and I have to say, I could have done without that. Obviously the point was to make it possible for local folks to watch rally cars burn more rubber than they’d be able to see standing on one bluff all day to see each car blast by once. It wasn’t great TV, though, compared to actual rallying, and the drivers were all saying the one weird little “jump” in the stadium track nearly blew their backs out. They kind of sounded like 2026 Formula 1 drivers: “That was terrible, but hopefully the fans liked it.”

They’re calling it the BRZ Spec.Z, and it really is a rally car in terms of engine, drive, and gearbox. It’s interesting that Subaru feels this model has the kind of pull that it should not just run as a high-downforce sports car in Super GT but also as a dirty off-road gremlin.

It seems to be working. The second new constructor has joined the championship, and it’s not a giant car company. It’s a sort of national Spanish initiative that is most efficiently called WRT Rally1 Spain. And they aren’t being shy about wanting to lure Dani Sordo away from Hyundai to drive for them.

The last car standing was the Toyota of Taka Katsuta, so that’s two in a row for him. We love that for Taka. But don’t let that obscure the fact that Hyundai is getting its act together.

Oh well. Maybe next year.

Rovanperä’s overall open-wheel trajectory has been sensible, but it has gone a little strangely. He got started in the well regarded Formula Regional Oceania championship over the winter, though he didn’t achieve many notable results, and he had to miss the final round due to — yes — illness. The plan was always then to enter Super Formula, but he has told reporters that this was the requirement of his minders at Toyota rather than his own initiative.

Super Formula is a very high-level series, of course — both Pierre Gasly and Liam Lawson had strong showings there prior to getting their Formula 1 rides, and Álex Palou did a turn there as well — but it’s certainly a bit more out-there of a choice for a Formula 1 aspirant than, say, Formula 2. It makes sense if you’re Toyota, though. But the latest development is the weirdest of all: The announcement of Rovanperä’s withdrawal was issued by Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda himself. It’s understandable that Toyota would take on Kalle’s career as a bit of a project given the prowess he showed in WRC, but one gets the impression that he is not entirely in control of his own destiny here.

Rovanperä’s winter testing in the Super Formula car was disrupted by issues that were reported as “vertigo,” but the vague statements imply that the current issue is a bit more significant than that. These developments have not been terribly well received by the race-viewing public, to the point that Rovanperä’s WRC stablemate, Takamoto Katsuta, felt the need to publicly defend him and continue to back him as a Formula 1 prospect.

From a results perspective, it was gripping, with the lead swinging back and forth from stage to stage, eventually ending up in the hands of Takamoto Katsuta, his long-awaited first win in WRC. Everybody liked that (even though it was still a Toyota ass-whooping).

But the course was a real mess. Many tires were destroyed, many corners were destroyed by destroyed tires, whole suspensions were destroyed, whole teams had all their engines overheat because of intakes clogged with mud… and that was on the stages that weren’t canceled for being too treacherous!

Don’t get me wrong, it was a great watch, but I would not be pleased if I were a WRC team’s comptroller.

There are high-level discussions going on about the future of the event; they weren’t triggered by the craziness of this year’s rally, but that couldn’t be helping. This will be the last year the event has direct government involvement, and organizers and the series are trying to hash out what its future will look like. I hope they come up with something.

But the next layer of the objection always seems to be that this is about marketing rather than racing, and usually they cite as evidence the fact that Formula 4 cars are not the best or most challenging race cars in the world. Well, I would like to invite such critics to race one against these women. Now that we’re enough years in for F1 Academy graduates to start forging grown-up racing careers, one after another is revealing that she is not aspiring to be an Instagram influencer but rather a racing driver.

This is the greatest such story yet, to my eye. Lia Block is doing a full American Rally Association season in a Hyundai i20 N Rally2 car, and she’s making quite clear that her ambition is to contest the FIA World Rally Championship. Her father, of course, was Ken Block, so it runs in the family. To lose your father in an off-road vehicle crash and stay on your path towards being a professional driver is no small or simple thing. She knows exactly what she’s getting into, and she intends to do it at the highest level.

Meanwhile, it’s about to be March, and we still have no idea how people outside of Japan are supposed to watch Super Formula this year.

Watch on YouTube

Jos Verstappen was driving a BMW M3 E30 in the event; he was not involved in the accident.