After four largely unique rounds of the FIA World Rally Championship, Rally de Portugal marks the start of 2025’s gravel season as the first of seven successive events held on the loose.
With more Rally1 cars than we’ve seen for two and a half years, and a record WRC2 entry, 2025’s edition of Rally Portugal is already grabbing the headlines before it’s even begun. Rally Islas Canarias was bad for Hyundai, that much nobody is denying.
Even it is aware and seeing the light side with some amusing Uno-based social media content in the lead up to this week’s Rally Portugal.
But quite what its self-titled “midfield finish” in the Canaries means for the rest of its World Rally Championship campaign will only begin to become clear through the course of the next events.
The clever money is on ‘not much at all.’ Sure, Hyundai dropped a healthy haul of points to Toyota in what’s so far been a one-sided race for the manufacturers’ championship, but nobody within the team is expecting the struggle of Canarias to continue on gravel.
Toyota’s domination of the early part of the 2025 World Rally Championship season means little as the series heads west for this week’s Rally Portugal, says technical director Tom Fowler.
The GR Yaris Rally1 has set the pace across the first four rallies of the year, scoring maximum manufacturer points on three of those events, but Fowler insists his squad’s feet are firmly on the floor as they prepare for the gravel roads around Matosinhos.
New setup or not, Toyota’s record on mainland Europe’s westernmost round is impressive, with victory on the last five editions of Rally Portugal.
M-Sport is the team that has doubled in size from the trip to Gran Canaria. Alongside regulars Grégoire Munster and Josh McErlean, Mãrtiņš Sesks makes his second start of the season after securing sixth place in Sweden, while Portuguese privateer Diogo Salvi has also hired a Puma Rally1 for his home round of the championship.
Mãrtiņş Sesks isn’t chasing headline results as he heads into the first of five consecutive World Rally Championship rounds this week with M-Sport.
Instead, his priority is experience of events as he seeks to ready himself to be a podium contender in the future.
The 25-year-old Latvian has a six-round program in place behind the wheel of a Ford Puma Rally1 this year, which began with a sixth-place finish at February’s Rally Sweden.
