September 21, 2026
Solberg Rally Chile win — WRC title race special | By Paul Chappell, Founder, SIMPRO Academy Phuket | 21 September 2026 | 9 min read
The Solberg Rally Chile win didn’t just hand Oliver Solberg and co-driver Elliott Edmondson their second victory of the 2026 World Rally Championship season — it detonated the title race with a single round left on the calendar. Driving the Toyota GR Yaris Rally1, Solberg led fifteen of Rally Chile Biobío’s sixteen stages and crossed the finish 16.6 seconds clear of teammate Sébastien Ogier, while championship leader Elfyn Evans limped from second to fifth after a puncture on the penultimate test. What looked like a comfortable Evans procession three stages from home became, overnight, a three-way fight that will now be settled at the season finale in Sardinia.
For the team at SIMPRO Academy Phuket, the Solberg Rally Chile win is exactly why we built a rig capable of reproducing the punishing, unpredictable conditions of world rallying. Our Simucube 2 Pro direct-drive wheelbase and Simtrecs load-cell pedals sit at Boat Lagoon Marina, a few minutes from Phuket’s beaches, and let tourists and motorsport fans alike feel the same red-clay instability, mid-corner weight transfer and puncture-inducing rock strikes that decided a world championship battle 15,000 kilometres away in Biobío. Whether you’re in Phuket for a week by the water or you’ve followed the WRC for twenty years, the stages behind the Solberg Rally Chile win are ones you can drive yourself, on our simulators, within the hour.
Rally Chile Biobío, round 12 of the 2026 championship, ran from 10–13 September on the fast, loose gravel and red clay stages south of Concepción, Chile. Solberg and Edmondson set the pace almost from the start, winning 15 of 16 stages in the Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 to finish 16.6 seconds ahead of teammate Sébastien Ogier and co-driver Vincent Landais, with Hyundai’s Adrien Fourmaux and Alexandre Coria completing the podium in third (source: DirtFish). It was Solberg’s first win since the season-opening Monte Carlo Rally and only his second of 2026 — a result he described afterward as coming after “an up and down year,” adding: “the team always supported and believed. Finally a little bit of luck on my side and I could just do my thing” (source: DirtFish).
The result carried extra weight because of what happened to the man who started the weekend leading the championship. Elfyn Evans and co-driver Scott Martin ran a comfortable second for most of the rally before a puncture on the penultimate stage, the newly added Carampangue test, dropped them to fifth in the final classification. “It was looking pretty positive this morning but these things happen unfortunately,” Evans said afterward. “We keep at it… it’ll be business as usual in Sardinia” (source: DirtFish). Sami Pajari and Marko Salminen finished fourth for Toyota, and summed up a title fight that had looked settled just weeks earlier: “In this sport things can change really, really quickly but we still have a couple more races to do and the fight is still very open” (source: DirtFish).
Rally Chile was also brutal on the field. Thierry Neuville rolled his Hyundai heavily on stage seven and retired, unhurt; M-Sport’s Jon Armstrong rolled on stage eight; Takamoto Katsuta beached his Toyota on the Friday; and at least five drivers were taken to hospital for precautionary checks after a rough opening day, with one fracture requiring surgery (source: Autosport, Hyundai Motorsport Newsroom). Beyond the standings shake-up, the Solberg Rally Chile win also confirmed Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT’s sixth consecutive manufacturers’ title — its tenth overall, drawing the team level with Lancia’s all-time record — with the championship mathematically wrapped up before the final round was even run (source: WRC.com).
Rally Chile Biobío sits on some of the most unpredictable surfaces on the WRC calendar: fast gravel roads over a red clay base that changes grip level from corner to corner, and sometimes from one pass of the same stage to the next. Crews drive at over 160 km/h on notes written days earlier, trusting a co-driver’s pace calls to warn them about a compression, a hidden crest or a rock embedded in the clay that could end a rally in an instant — exactly what happened to Elfyn Evans on Carampangue and to Thierry Neuville a day earlier. Unlike the closed, resurfaced circuits of GT and Formula racing, a WRC gravel stage is essentially a public road driven once at racing speed, which is why punctures, suspension breakages and rolls are treated as part of the sport rather than mechanical failures.
That unpredictability is also what makes rally driving one of the hardest disciplines to train for, physically and mentally. A driver has to process a co-driver’s pace notes in real time while managing weight transfer through a car that’s constantly stepping sideways on loose surfaces, all while a single misjudged braking point can turn a podium into a retirement — as Rally Chile proved for five of the world’s best drivers inside three days. It’s a very different skill set to circuit racing, and one that most simulator setups, built around tarmac GT and Formula cars, don’t replicate at all.
SIMPRO Academy Phuket is one of the few simulator centres in Southeast Asia set up specifically to reproduce what Solberg, Evans and Neuville faced in Chile. Our rig runs EA Sports WRC Rally and Assetto Corsa Rally, the two rally-specific platforms in our simulator library, on a Simucube 2 Pro direct-drive wheelbase (25 Nm) paired with Simtrecs load-cell pedals and triple 32-inch curved monitors — hardware built to transmit exactly the kind of sudden grip loss and mid-corner instability that caught out even Rally1 professionals in Biobío. Rally Chile itself is in our stage library, alongside Monte Carlo, Rally Finland, Rally Portugal, Wales Rally GB, Rally Australia and Safari Rally Kenya, so guests can drive the same event that just reshaped the 2026 championship, not a generic substitute.
As a Qualified Flight Instructor and lifelong motorsport enthusiast who has completed a professional rally driver training course himself, our founder Paul Chappell built SIMPRO’s coaching sessions around the same principle used in full-motion flight simulator training: you build precise, repeatable skill under controlled risk before you ever face the real, unpredictable version. That applies just as directly to a tourist trying rally driving for the first time as it does to a visiting motorsport fan who wants to relive the Solberg Rally Chile win first-hand and understand why a driver as good as Neuville can roll a car on a stage he’s driven a dozen times. If you’re new to sim racing altogether, our Getting Started with Sim Racing guide walks through the basics of car control before you step up to rally-specific coaching.
Further reading: Getting Started with Sim Racing: A Beginner’s Complete Guide (2026)
Book a coached session on SIMPRO’s Simucube 2 Pro direct-drive rig and drive Rally Chile, Monte Carlo, Rally Finland and more on EA Sports WRC Rally and Assetto Corsa Rally.
Pricing: 1,300 THB per 60-minute coached session (add 30 minutes for +500 THB, or upgrade to 2,000 THB/hour 1-on-1 coaching) — all-inclusive, includes 7% VAT and 3% booking fee.
Hardware: Simucube 2 Pro direct-drive wheelbase (25 Nm), Simtrecs load-cell pedals, triple 32-inch curved monitors.
23 Boat Lagoon Marina, Soho Pool Club, Moo 2, Koh Kaeo, Ampur Mueang, Phuket 83000
Tel: +66 62 962 2822 | Email: info@simproacademyphuket.com
Book Now
The Solberg Rally Chile win didn’t just shuffle the standings — it also collided with a major calendar change. Rally Saudi Arabia, originally scheduled to close the 2026 season on 11–14 November, has been cancelled outright and will not be replaced, after Toyota and Hyundai told the FIA their staff could not travel to the region under company travel policies amid the ongoing regional unrest tied to the Iran war (source: Motorsport.com, DirtFish). FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem confirmed the WRC element of the event “will not proceed this year,” though Jeddah will still host a rally as part of the separate Middle East Rally Championship (source: Arab News).
That cancellation makes Rally Italia Sardegna (1–4 October 2026, Alghero, 17 gravel stages, roughly 307 competitive kilometres) the new season finale — and, for the first time all year, an outright title decider. Elfyn Evans leads Sami Pajari by 17 points and Oliver Solberg by 21 with only 35 points available in Sardinia, meaning a haul of just 19 points guarantees Evans the title and would make him only the third British world champion after Colin McRae and Richard Burns. Pajari has never out-scored Evans by more than 13 points in any single round this season, which makes Evans the clear favourite — but after the Solberg Rally Chile win exposed just how fast a lead can evaporate, nobody at Toyota is treating Sardinia as a formality. Sébastien Ogier, still hunting rally wins after his title defence effectively ended in Paraguay, and Adrien Fourmaux, still chasing a maiden Rally1 victory, add two more storylines to a finale that was never supposed to be in Italy at all.
Oliver Solberg and co-driver Elliott Edmondson won Rally Chile Biobío for Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT on 13 September 2026, leading 15 of 16 stages and finishing 16.6 seconds ahead of teammate Sébastien Ogier. Championship leader Elfyn Evans dropped from second to fifth after a late puncture, tightening the 2026 WRC title race to a three-way fight with one round remaining (source: DirtFish, WRC.com).
After the Solberg Rally Chile win in Round 12, Elfyn Evans leads with 230 points, ahead of Sami Pajari on 213 and Oliver Solberg on 209. Sébastien Ogier (171), Adrien Fourmaux (167) and Takamoto Katsuta (163) are no longer in mathematical title contention (source: Toyota Gazoo Racing official standings).
Rally Italia Sardegna, 1–4 October 2026, now closes the season after Rally Saudi Arabia was cancelled due to regional travel restrictions linked to the Iran war. In the wake of the Solberg Rally Chile win, Sardinia’s gravel stages will decide the drivers’ title outright (source: Motorsport.com, DirtFish).
Yes. Rally Chile is part of SIMPRO’s rally stage library, alongside Monte Carlo, Rally Finland, Rally Portugal, Wales Rally GB, Rally Australia and Safari Rally Kenya, run on EA Sports WRC Rally and Assetto Corsa Rally with a Simucube 2 Pro direct-drive wheelbase and Simtrecs load-cell pedals. Sessions start at 1,300 THB for 60 minutes, all-inclusive, at our Boat Lagoon Marina location.
Drivers’ Championship
| Position | Driver | Team | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Elfyn Evans | Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT | 230 |
| 2 | Sami Pajari | Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT | 213 |
| 3 | Oliver Solberg | Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT | 209 |
| 4 | Sébastien Ogier | Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT | 171 |
| 5 | Adrien Fourmaux | Hyundai Shell Mobis WRT | 167 |
| 6 | Takamoto Katsuta | Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT2 | 163 |
| 7 | Thierry Neuville | Hyundai Shell Mobis WRT | 129 |
Manufacturers’ Championship
| Position | Team | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT (title clinched) | 614 |
| 2 | Hyundai Shell Mobis WRT | 410 |
| 3 | Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT2 | 227 |
| 4 | M-Sport Ford WRT | 152 |
From Rally Chile’s red clay to Monte Carlo’s tarmac hairpins, drive the stages behind the 2026 WRC title race on our Simucube 2 Pro rig — or step into our VR flight simulator for a completely different challenge.
Pricing: 1,300 THB per 60-minute coached session (add 30 minutes for +500 THB, or upgrade to 2,000 THB/hour 1-on-1 coaching) — all-inclusive, includes 7% VAT and 3% booking fee.
23 Boat Lagoon Marina, Soho Pool Club, Moo 2, Koh Kaeo, Ampur Mueang, Phuket 83000
Tel: +66 62 962 2822 | Email: info@simproacademyphuket.com
Book Now
Paul Chappell is Founder and Operator of SIMPRO Academy Phuket. With 23+ years as a professional airline pilot, including a Lead Captain position on a Boeing Business Jet where he managed flight training and checking responsibilities, Paul brings deep expertise in precision performance and simulator-based training. He is a Qualified Flight Instructor with thousands of hours on certified full-motion flight simulators. Beyond aviation, Paul is a lifelong motorsport enthusiast — 10+ years on high-performance motorbikes, multiple track days in an AMG 45S, a professional rally driver training course, and extensive go-kart racing. He founded SIMPRO Academy in 2024 to bring professional-grade sim racing and flight simulation training to Southeast Asia.
Leave a Comment: