10 best WRC drivers of 2022 | GRR

10. Emil Lindholm

Such was the inconsistency of so many top WRC drivers in 2022, that it’s the WRC-2 champion Emil Linholm that takes the final place on this list. And that first sentence does the young Finn a disservice. 

Linholm won the title in part due to the up and down seasons that Andreas Mikkelsen and Kajetan Kajetanowicz had in 2023. But it was mostly because where Mikkelsen and Kajetanowicz kept messing up, Lindholm stayed true. Two wins, in Finland and Greece, came when either his opponents were absent or hit trouble, but Lindholm scored in every single round of the season (taking into account his powerstage points in Sweden) and consistent-ed his way to the title.

As young drivers make their way up the ladder it’s being able to bring a car to the end of a rally that’s as prized as speed in some ways, so don’t be surprised to see Lindholm, who combined his WRC-2 title with second place in the Finnish national championship, on some bigger radars.

9. Dani Sordo

Dani Sordo did Dani Sordo things in 2022. From five starts he secured three podiums and another points finish. While the youngster with whom he shared the full-season car (Oliver Solberg) proceeded to chuck the i20N at the scenery any time he could, Hyundai knew it could count on Sordo to bring home the points.

That will be a large part of the team’s thinking when it chose to end its contract with Solberg in favour of a more experienced second part-time driver in 2022. The existence of such a reliable driver in Sordo will have shown up whatever Solberg was able to achieve for the team. In fact it also seems unfair that Sordo only got five bites at the cherry this year, such was his consistency. The fact that he was so angry with himself for a steady fifth in Spain showcased just how high Sordo’s standards are. He’ll be back for a part-time ride in 2023, a situation that suits the Spaniard just fine, and if the i20N’s troubles are ironed out he might just be in for the odd appearance on the top step.

8. Pierre-Louis Loubet

At the start of the season I would have told you that Adrian Formaux was the most exciting of the young drivers in the M-Sport stable. But that particular Frenchman then chucked his car at the scenery so often and with such ferocity he was seen helping rebuild his cars in the factory in part, we assume, to help his guilt.

But behind Formaux’s troubles a second young French talent found time to shine. Two seasons in Hyundai’s junior team had seen 2019 WRC-2 champion Loubet yield just two points finishes and an awful lot of restarts the next day. The switch to M-Sport may have only given him seven rallies, but he scored points on four of those seven and was twice only just off the podium. Loubet came across as focused in 2022, looking to re-find his form and consistency, and in the arms of M-Sport he seems to have found a home that can nurture him. 

7. Elfyn Evans

This was probably Elfyn Evans’ Annus Horribilis, but it still resulted in four podiums and fourth in the championship. But there was just something not quite right for the Welshman this year. 

It started right from the off when he slid off the side of the road and was left stranded on a steep bank. From then things just seemed to keep going wrong. He was fighting for the lead in Sweden when he found a snowbank, this after nearly demolishing a stage end pushing to fight his team-mate. And then even when the rhythm of driving the new GR Yaris came he still couldn’t really get close to Rovenperä. 

A string of mid-season second places showed that he has not suddenly lost his speed, but 2022 didn’t bear a single win and more than once he surrendered leads to one of the three ahead of him in the title chase. Evans claims he has no worries about finding a rhythm with the 2023 car, but he’ll need to show he’s comfortable from the off, otherwise there are a lot of young, hungry drivers now hunting for rides.

6. Sebastien Ogier

It really didn’t feel like Ogier had been away. And that’s because he hadn’t; there was a day less than two months’ gap between Ogier retiring from top-level rallying and his return to a top level rally car. Yes this was a part-time season, and he wasn’t as involved as normal over the winter, but to all intents and purposes, he just moved onto the next rally.

And that showed. Ogier was instantly fast, if anything he should have won that Monte Carlo Rally rather than his countryman, and his charge back following a puncture showed that the fight is still there. The rest of the season was something of a fight between him and Pirelli, a bugbear of Ogier’s for many seasons. Punctures seemed to blight most of the six rallies he did in 2023.

But in Spain he was peerless. Ogier took the rally lead on stage five and never relinquished it. The win followed up a smart podium in New Zealand that helped Toyota to retain its manufacturers’ crown. He also led in Kenya before – you guessed – another puncture. He’ll be back for more rallies in 2023 as he continues to work out what retirement means to him. We’d expect to see him fighting for wins again.

5. Sebastien Loeb

Sebastien Loeb doesn’t need to prove himself. He’d won 79 WRC rallies and nine titles before the 2022 season began. But such is the competitive nature of the French legend that he will continue to come back every season he can. A deal with M-Sport to rally its new Puma WRC came together late, but the team had been working on the new car for longer than any other in the hope of starting strong again, and the new pairing proved to be instantly fast.

Every time Loeb stepped into the Puma, four times in total, he was fast. The victory at Monte Carlo may have been largely provided by a puncture for fellow WRC legend Ogier, but Loeb was class and backed it up by being in contention for podiums every time he returned. He could have won in Greece but for an alternator belt issue.

It was a bit of a toss-up as to which Seb got the higher spot, the gap between drivers pushed Loeb higher. The Puma was clearly quick, but no one else in the team managed to get a hold of it in the way that Loeb did. It’s not certain if team and driver will be able to get a deal signed for 2023, but it’s clear that Sebastien Loeb is not done with top level rallying. 

4. Takamoto Katsuta

The man they call Taka finished just behind his team-mate Elfyn Evans in the 2023 standings, but in reality this was a much better season for the Japanese than the Welshman. After taking his first ever podium in 2022 the target was two in 2023, and the consistency to keep picking up points. If he did that, Toyota would be happy to elevate him to their top WRC team rather than leaving him in the non-points-scoring car. 

Katsuta delivered. Yes his podiums only came in the middle and end of the year, but he scored points in every single rally and backed that up with powerstage points five times. In fact Katsuta was the only driver to finish in the top ten on every rally. That consistency, to add to the brief showcases of speed, was crucial to Toyota’s decision to give him a go in the top car next year. If he can continue to improve you would hope that a rally victory can only be so far away. 

Taka is a popular man in the paddocks, his interesting breakfast choices became the talk of the WRC at times, and the podium at his home rally was universally popular. There will be very few people that would begrudge him taking the next step. 

3. Thierry Neuville

This list wouldn’t really work if it was just in championship order, but when only three of the regular season drivers win a rally it’s quite hard to overlook them for the top three of the season. It was an odd year for Neuville, in which he was beaten by not just the champion but also by his team-mate, but one where at the same time he cemented himself as the clear team leader at Hyundai.

It took until Greece, the tenth round of the season, for Neuville to win a rally – a victory that much annoyed his team-mate – one round after he had thrown away what looked like an easy victory on home soil by understeering into a ditch. But he backed it up with a victory at the final round to cut the gap to Tänak to a respectable level. 

Like Tänak, Neuville was hampered by the late arrival of the latest i20N and it was clearly not a finished car at the start of the season, but as the car was developed, so the results came, and he clearly never stopped plugging away. With Tänak now departed, the Belgian and Sordo are joined by Esapekka Lappi and Craig Breen for 2023, all good drivers, but none expected to provide a real challenge for Neuville. Should the i20N continue its progress, the new year must be the best chance yet to see champion Thierry?

2. Ott Tänak

Tänak wasn’t happy for most of 2022, but somehow an out-of-sorts Tänak was still something to be feared. At times his stage end interviews showed a man who seemed to have lost all interest in rallying, And yet he secured eight podiums, of which three saw Tänak on the top step and he ended the season just 50 points behind what was, in reality, a runaway champion. 

But there was more to be found behind Tänak’s displeasure. The speed remained but it seemed like Ott felt like he was living in someone else’s team. He had spoken out strongly about the departure of former team boss Andrea Adamo and was clearly aggrieved at how far the team was behind its competitors from the word go. What happened in Greece was just the cherry on the unhappy cake.

But when Tänak got his head down he was outrageously fast. His win in Finland was the first time Toyota had lost its home round since it returned to the championship. Tänak then followed it up with an unexpected tarmac win in team-mate Neuville’s backyard, a weekend that saw Rovenperä falter for the first time. But despite him cutting down the Toyota driver’s championship lead Hyundai refused to use team orders to put him in front of Neuville in Greece. That was probably the final straw for both Tänak’s championship charge and his relationship with Hyundai. We’re yet to find out what the Estonian will do next, but we can only hope he finds a drive, as he is clearly still at the very top of his game. 

1. Kalle Rovanperä

Who else could it be than the youngest World Rally Champion in history? Rovanperä’s rise to the top hasn’t been quite as meteoric as you might think. Those watching the rallying world closely have been following his journey since he was barely into double figures; he had driven a full scale WRC car before he was eligible for a driving licence. But his rise to the top has been managed carefully. Rovanperä arrived in WRC-2 in 2017, finished third in 2018, won it in 2019 and entered the WRC in 2020. Since then, he has worked up through a first podium in his first season, first win in 2021, and the title in 2022. 

From the second round, Rovanperä was the class of the field. As his team-mate, and the expected title challenger, Evans failed to come to terms with the new GR Yaris, Rovanperä thrived. He reeled off wins in Sweden, Croatia and Portugal, adding Kenya and Estonia to make it five wins out of seven at the start of the year. By the middle of the season he had all but sewn up the title. 

Kalle’s form dipped after he secured a near unassailable lead, as a series of mistakes crept in, perhaps in part due to the pressure of crossing the line for the title and perhaps as his focus slipped. But there was no stopping the young Finn. If his career is destined to keep improving, you can only wonder what comes next.