Sami Pajari led Delfi Rally Estonia from the first stage to the last. On the fast gravel around Tartu he won twelve of the eighteen stages and crossed the final line 19.5 seconds clear of his Toyota team-mate Oliver Solberg. It was his first victory in the World Rally Championship, taken with co-driver Marko Salminen beside him.
How it was decided
Pajari settled the rally early. He took the opening stage, then built a lead through Friday and Saturday morning with a run of nine consecutive fastest times. On terrain that rewards commitment and punishes hesitation, he never surrendered the front. Solberg had the pace to answer only in fragments; on the long Kaariku test he edged his team-mate by four tenths, but by then Pajari was firmly in control. By the final leg the Finn held a margin of around twenty-five seconds and could manage his run to the flag, dropping to sixth quickest on the closing test without threat to his position. Behind the Toyotas, Adrien Fourmaux held off Hyundai team-mate Thierry Neuville for third. Nine-time world champion Sebastien Ogier finished a distant fifth.
The manner of it surprised even the winner.
"At moments like this you don't realise what has happened, but I'm happy," Pajari told reporters after the finish.He admitted he had not expected to control the weekend so completely, having sensed only a small margin over his rivals through most of the rally.
A step long in the making
The result had been coming. Pajari led last season's finale in Saudi Arabia before punctures intervened, and he was on course to win in Croatia this year until the same misfortune struck again. In Estonia nothing went wrong. The victory made him the eighty-third different driver to win a round of the World Rally Championship, and the seventeenth Finn to do so. For Salminen, forty-seven and first on a WRC start line in 2008, it was a first outright win at the top level. Pajari extended his podium record to six for the season, more than any other driver in 2026, and moved up to third in the standings.
Estonia has a habit of marking beginnings. Kalle Rovanpera broke through here in 2021, Solberg in 2025. Pajari now joins them. He arrives at his home round in Finland, next on the calendar, as a driver who has learned to finish what he starts.
