The Welshman lost out to his team-mate Sébastien Ogier in the title fight by four points. Evans, who turned 38 on Sunday, has now finished runner-up in the World Championship five times. Against Ogier in particular, Evans has been beaten three times in the fight for the title.
The championship was decided in Saudi Arabia in November, but according to the Toyota driver that rally did not ultimately dictate the outcome of the title.
“Of course, there’s better things that we could have done during the year, but you know, it was also the case that it was an okay year. But not strong enough, obviously, to beat Seb this time,” Evans says.
“I wasn’t fast enough maybe on some of the dry gravel rallies in the middle of the year. Here especially, I don’t think it made any difference because the road position was playing such a huge part. We could have been ten or 20 seconds closer at some point in the rally, but in the end it wouldn’t have changed the outcome. I don’t really blame fully this rally for the outcome in the end.”
Evans moved quickly into the championship lead at the start of the year and had to sweep loose gravel in many gravel rallies. Points were also lost towards the end of the season, when for example in Rally Japan Evans lost the Power Stage win to Ogier by 0.1 seconds.
“It was a four point swing in Japan. There was a four point swing in Chile. Both rallies that we actually did pretty well on. But then there was also the rallies, Greece, Portugal, Sardinia, where we really struggled and then couldn’t take really any advantage,” Evans sums up.
“I think the Super Sunday maybe was also a huge influence. I was not being able to bounce back there, there’s always a few handful of points here or there that we could have done differently.”
