Toyota has turned the first half of the 2026 World Rally Championship into a procession, and Hyundai knows it. Seven rounds in, the GR Yaris Rally1 has won six rallies, filled 18 of 21 podium places and built a 127-point lead in the manufacturers' standings. Elfyn Evans heads an all-Toyota top five in the drivers' table. Yet as the championship swings back to gravel for its entire second half, Hyundai believes the picture is about to change.
The Korean manufacturer sits second, comfortably clear of M-Sport Ford, with one win, three podiums and 243 points. Adrien Fourmaux is its best-placed driver in sixth on 89 points, one shy of Sebastien Ogier, with 2024 world champion Thierry Neuville seventh on 73. The numbers reflect a team with pace but not the all-surface consistency to match Toyota's depth, a weakness brutally exposed across a Tarmac-heavy opening run.
Hyundai's second-half plan is built on road position and gravel. Because of its lower championship standing, its cars start further back on loose-surface stages, an advantage when the leaders sweep a clean line for everyone behind.
"To be as annoying as possible to all of the Toyota competitors," sporting director Andrew Wheatley told DirtFish when asked for the target. "There's a couple of advantages that we're going to have in the second half of the year. Because of our championship position, road order should be quite good most of the year."
Wheatley sees genuine opportunity on the run of gravel events from the EKO Acropolis Rally Greece (25-28 June) onwards. "We think probably we can be super competitive on 75% [of the remaining rallies] and fighting to win on probably 40-50%," he said. "The events most similar to Portugal, Greece, Sardinia, Saudi, are the kind of events that have traditionally suited the car. If we have grip, the car is back."
Neuville, who delivered Hyundai's only win of the year in Portugal, said the team "needs to be strong" over the second half and expects to be "more comfortable with the car on gravel, [so] it will be more competitive". His Portugal victory, the 23rd of his career, came four weeks after he crashed out of the lead in Croatia on the final stage. "We needed to fight back," he said afterwards.
Fourmaux, still chasing a maiden WRC win, is targeting a championship recovery on the surfaces that suit him. "If it goes well as in Kenya and in Portugal, I think we have a chance to catch some position," he told DirtFish. "It's quite far, but we never know until the end."
Toyota's challenge may be more internal than external. With Evans, Takamoto Katsuta, a two-time winner in 2026 and the first Japanese driver ever to lead the standings, plus Ogier, Oliver Solberg and Sami Pajari all capable of taking points off one another, the team's biggest task could be managing a five-way fight without blunting the freedom that has made it so strong.
That tension defines the run-in. Greece, Estonia, Finland, Paraguay, Chile, Italy and Saudi Arabia offer the rough, fast and hot gravel where Hyundai expects to be sharper, and where Toyota's only real vulnerability, so many frontrunners exposed to the same trouble, could finally cost it. Whether Portugal was a one-off or the start of a genuine fightback is the question that will shape the title race.
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