“He Couldn’t Believe What Just Happened”—Elfyn Evans Breaks Down as Toyota Falls Apart in the Canaries

The air was thick with heat and fear. On the narrow, snaking tarmac roads of Islas Canarias, the smell of burned rubber mixed with salt and smoke. Helicopters circled above. Marshals leaned closer to the edge of cliffs. And down in the belly of the mountain, Elfyn Evans was fighting for more than a stage time. He was fighting for control—of the car, of the race, of the very story that has begun to unravel around him and his team.

For years, Toyota Gazoo Racing has been the standard in rally supremacy. Precision-built machines. Calculated risks. Cold-blooded domination. But that image is now slipping, crumbling mile by mile—and nowhere has the chaos hit harder than in the Canaries, where Evans found himself at the center of what insiders are now calling Toyota’s silent collapse.

This wasn’t just another bad stage. This wasn’t just a tire gamble gone wrong. This was a complete psychological meltdown, triggered by one of the most brutal, unpredictable, and mismanaged rallies in recent memory. And it may have changed the course of Toyota’s WRC season—and possibly Evans’ career—forever.

A Place That Eats Cars Alive

If you ask the locals, the mountains of Islas Canarias aren’t just scenic. They’re alive. The roads coil like serpents, punishing every misstep, every hesitation. One missed downshift and you’re over a cliff. One wrong brake bias and you’re in a rock wall. It’s not just treacherous—it’s personal.

And that’s where Elfyn Evans, Toyota’s ever-professional, ever-composed front-runner, found himself being devoured. Not physically, but mentally. On Stage 4, he clipped a wall. On Stage 6, a tire delaminated. On Stage 7, his rear brakes locked coming into a blind right-hander, sending the Yaris GR sideways with only raw instinct keeping it out of the trees.

The damage wasn’t just mechanical. It was spiritual.

Each time Evans stepped out of the car, the look in his eyes grew darker. More distant. Like a man slipping out of the narrative that once made him a title favorite.

And back in the service park, things weren’t better. Toyota Gazoo Racing, once a model of tactical clarity, now looked like a team in the middle of an identity crisis. Engineers are arguing quietly. Team managers are buried in spreadsheets. Radios were silent when they should have been screaming. The grip was gone—not just on the road, but on the season.

By the end of Day 2, Evans was seventh overall. But it might as well have been 70th. The gap was psychological. His lines were clean. His notes were sharp. But something had cracked.

And it wasn’t just Evans.

The Nightmare Spreads Through the Team

What happened to Toyota in Islas Canarias cannot be blamed on road surface or weather patterns alone. Something deeper is festering. Kalle Rovanperä, once the team’s young savior, has gone eerily quiet in recent press conferences. Sébastien Ogier, called in for veteran support, was seen walking out of a strategy meeting early—no words, no eye contact. And Takamoto Katsuta, the ever-enthusiastic wildcard, has begun openly questioning team orders.

But Evans? He’s become the emotional epicenter of it all.

Why? Because he’s the one who always plays by the book. He listens. He trusts. He executes. He doesn’t complain.

Until now.

Midway through Stage 10, when the grip fell away again without warning, Evans radioed in a message unlike any he’s ever said before.

“This is undriveable. We’re just hanging on. What is going on?”

The voice that came back didn’t offer solutions. Only silence. Then static. Then a half-hearted suggestion to adjust differential settings—two stages too late.

What Toyota didn’t know was that on that same stage, one of Hyundai’s test engineers was positioned at the braking zone with a stopwatch. And what he timed confirmed the worst: Toyota’s latest suspension package was costing them 0.4 seconds per corner in low-speed technical sections.

It doesn’t sound like much—until you multiply it by 19 stages. Or stack it against Thierry Neuville’s perfect tire call. Or compare it to M-Sport’s late-stage throttle map tweak that sent Adrien Fourmaux climbing the leaderboard.

Toyota is slipping. And they’re doing it in real time.

By the time the Canaries were over, Evans had dropped to P8. Not because of one big crash. But because of a thousand small failures. The kind that add up. The kind that break drivers—not instantly, but like slow poison.

And when the car finally rolled into parc fermé, Evans didn’t speak to the press. He walked past the cameras. Past the fans. Straight into the back of the hauler. And shut the door.

The Collapse Isn’t Coming—It’s Already Here

The headlines will call it a “disappointing weekend.” The official press release will use words like “unfortunate conditions” and “data gathering.” But the reality, inside Toyota’s garage, is much darker.

They are losing control.

Of their cars. Of their strategy. Of their drivers.

What happened in the Canaries wasn’t an outlier. It was an exposure. The kind that reveals rot beneath the paint.

Insiders say a power struggle is brewing between the engineering wing in Finland and the strategy crew back in Cologne. Those new performance updates were vetoed weeks ago because of a late homologation delay. That drivers no longer feel confident their feedback is being heard.

And worst of all, that Evans—Toyota’s most emotionally resilient driver—is beginning to lose faith.

Because when Elfyn Evans starts asking, “What is going on?” instead of saying, “We’ll learn from this,” you know something is badly wrong.

If you ask the locals, the mountains of Islas Canarias aren’t just scenic. They’re alive. The roads coil like serpents, punishing every misstep, every hesitation. One missed downshift and you’re over a cliff. One wrong brake bias and you’re in a rock wall. It’s not just treacherous—it’s personal.

And that’s where Elfyn Evans, Toyota’s ever-professional, ever-composed front-runner, found himself being devoured. Not physically, but mentally. On Stage 4, he clipped a wall. On Stage 6, a tire delaminated. On Stage 7, his rear brakes locked coming into a blind right-hander, sending the Yaris GR sideways with only raw instinct keeping it out of the trees.

The damage wasn’t just mechanical. It was spiritual.

Each time Evans stepped out of the car, the look in his eyes grew darker. More distant. Like a man slipping out of the narrative that once made him a title favorite.

And back in the service park, things weren’t better. Toyota Gazoo Racing, once a model of tactical clarity, now looked like a team in the middle of an identity crisis. Engineers are arguing quietly. Team managers are buried in spreadsheets. Radios were silent when they should have been screaming. The grip was gone—not just on the road, but on the season.

By the end of Day 2, Evans was seventh overall. But it might as well have been 70th. The gap was psychological. His lines were clean. His notes were sharp. But something had cracked.

And it wasn’t just Evans.

He’s not the type to explode. He’s not the type to throw helmets. But what’s happening to him now may be even more dangerous:

He’s detaching.

When great drivers stop getting answers, they stop asking questions.

And when that happens, championships slip away—not with a bang, but with a shrug.