12 spectacular shots from Rally Finland

This year’s World Rally Championship is hotting up, and the arrival at the business end of the season appears to have banished all but the slightest trace of caution from the field. Which is how we like it.

In a pulsating edition of Rally Finland this weekend - and on the 70th anniversary of the event, no less - Toyota’s Elfyn Evans held off the Hyundai of Ott Tanak by 14.1 seconds to claim his second victory of 2021.

The win means the Welshman is now in a two-man showdown for the title, after championship leader and fellow Yaris WRC driver Sebastien Ogier could only manage fifth in Finland. The gap between them is 24 points with two rounds to go.

And that means only two more weekends of watching the current generation of Rally1 cars tear up the countryside, with simplified, Greenpeace-friendly hybrids being introduced in 2022. We’re not crying, you’re crying.

The eco credentials of the new breed shouldn’t be sniffed at, but the abilities of the current crop will surely be missed. The internet was awash with fan videos showing the cars’ incredible, searing speed on what was their last ever gravel event: will we ever see anything like it again?

And then there were the jumps. Alright, so the ones pictured in the gallery above are taken from just after the finish line, and if you’re a purist they’re not a reason to get excited. But we’re not, so we did.

The final flourish gave us some spectacular shots of the field in an unofficial ‘I-can-get-more-airborne-than-you’ contest, reportedly won by M-Sport Ford’s Adrien Fourmaux with a leap of 68 metres to end the stage. 68 metres! In a car!

The mind boggles. Flick through our gallery and see how long it takes for your jaw to hit the carpet…