Five times the runner-up, at last the champion: Evans ends a 25-year British wait

For five of the last six years, Elfyn Evans watched someone else lift the World Rally Championship trophy. On Sunday in Sardinia, the 37-year-old Welshman stopped watching. In a final-stage shootout with his own Toyota teammate Oliver Solberg, Evans held his nerve to clinch his first world title — the first for a British driver since Richard Burns in 2001, and only the third Briton ever after Colin McRae. Solberg won the rally itself and finished the season runner-up; Evans won the war.