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Sami Pajari and Marko Salminen won the inaugural ueno Rally del Paraguay by 25.8 seconds, while Diego Domínguez won WRC2 at home and Naveen Pulligilla completed the WRC3 podium.
Photograph: WRC / Red Bull Content PoolParaguay has its first WRC winner, and the name at the top of the record is Sami Pajari. With Marko Salminen beside him, Pajari completed a remarkable hat-trick of victories in the championship, adding the inaugural ueno Rally del Paraguay to his home win in Finland and the breakthrough that began this run.
The Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 crew finished the 22-stage event with an official time of 3:13:28.5. Hayden Paddon and John Kennard took second at 25.8 seconds, while Adrien Fourmaux and Alexandre Coria completed the podium at 40.0 seconds. Elfyn Evans and Scott Martin finished fourth at 45.1 seconds, keeping the championship leader inside the fight all the way to the final control.
The route was scheduled to cover 22 gravel stages and 358.99 competitive kilometres through Itapúa. That distance remained the framework of the event, though the final record contains 21 completed stages. Artigas 2, SS21, was cancelled after Takamoto Katsuta’s accident. Katsuta and co-driver Aaron Johnston were taken by helicopter for precautionary medical examination, and the stage did not restart.
That decision matters because a rally result is also a record of the safety choices made around it. The final classification is not a simple count of completed stage numbers. It is the sporting result after the route, the timing service and the safety response have been brought together.
Pajari’s result is the first time a crew has opened its WRC winning account with three consecutive victories. The sequence has moved from the fast roads of Finland to Paraguay’s red gravel, and the common thread has been the ability to keep the car settled while the road changes its grip and its rhythm.
Paddon’s second place kept the winner honest. Fourmaux stayed close enough to make the podium a live question, and Evans finished only 5.1 seconds behind Fourmaux. Oliver Solberg was fifth overall and won the Wolf Power Stage, adding the final-day points that made the championship table even tighter.
Evans leaves Paraguay on 216 championship points. Pajari has 196 and Solberg 175, with three rounds remaining. Toyota also holds the manufacturers’ advantage on 554 points, ahead of Hyundai on 381. The gap at the top is no longer a comfortable one for the leader, and Pajari has the confidence of a driver who has won the last three rallies.
Diego Domínguez and Rogelio Peñate produced the home victory the event wanted. They finished seventh overall and won WRC2 by 22.7 seconds from Gus Greensmith and Jonas Andersson. Alejandro Galanti and Marcelo Toyotoshi were third in WRC2, 2:42.5 behind Domínguez, while Taylor Gill and Daniel Brkic finished fourth in the category, 13.9 seconds behind Galanti.
The WRC2 Challenger order followed the same leading shape. Domínguez won, Galanti was second and Taylor Gill was third. Lancia Corse HF secured the WRC2 Teams’ Championship through the result of Nikolay Gryazin and Yohan Rossel, adding a separate team milestone to a weekend already full of firsts.
Nataniel Bruun and Mario del Riego won WRC3 in a Ford Fiesta Rally3 with a time of 3:42:02.3. Eric Royère and Maxime Andernack were second, 15:02.9 behind. Naveen Pulligilla and Musa Sherif completed the WRC3 podium. The final FIA classification places them P42 overall in 5:10:54.9 after a recorded 15-minute penalty. Their stage time before that penalty was 4:55:54.9.
ViPeople sends its warm congratulations to Naveen Pulligilla and Musa Sherif. Their WRC3 podium in Paraguay followed second place in Saudi Arabia in 2025 and third at Safari Rally Kenya in March 2026. The result makes three WRC3 podiums across the pair’s international record, and confirms that the Saudi breakthrough was the beginning of a sustained chapter.
Naveen’s result needs one detail beside it. WRC reported that the crew crashed 28.1 kilometres into SS3 and did not reach Friday’s overnight halt. The FIA’s final classification records a 15-minute penalty and places them P42 overall while retaining their third place in WRC3. That is the complete result, with the class podium and the overall position both stated plainly.
Dean Mascarenhas and Gagan Karumbaiah followed a different path through the weekend. Their Ford Fiesta Rally3 suffered a temporary mechanical problem at SS9, and the crew rejoined on Sunday morning. A later accident at SS20, Artigas Oeste, ended the rally permanently. Dean therefore has no final classification. The correct result is DID NOT FINISH at SS20, even though the incident list still records the earlier Rejoined status.
Gabriel Duarte and Luiz Sampaio were the leading Rally4 crew, finishing P25 overall in a Peugeot 208 Rally4. Fabián Herrera and Martín Tomás followed in the category, with the final results also carrying crews from Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia and Europe across the full 44-car classified order.
The next WRC round is Rally Chile Bio Bío from 10 to 13 September. The roads will be different, the surface will ask new questions and the championship will arrive with Pajari’s three-win run sitting directly behind Evans’ lead. Paraguay has finished, though its effect on the season is only beginning.
