The 58th Vodafone Rally of Portugal makes a welcome return to the FIA Junior WRC calendar this year for the first time since 2022 and a dozen budding future World Champions grace the impressive entry list.
The Junior season started in the icy Swedish forests in February, heads to the gravel stages of Portugal, Greece and Finland and then concludes with the Central European Rally in mid-October.
Sweden’s Mille Johansson arrives in Matosinhos with a slender two-point lead in the series over Australia’s Taylor Gill. Gill topped the overall Junior classification in Scandinavia but Johansson earned a whopping 12 additional Wolf stage bonus points. Ireland’s Eamonn Kelly and the Turkish duo of Ali Türkkan and Kerem Kazaz round off the top five with Juniors from Belgium, Germany, France, Paraguay and South Africa in the points after round one.
Kelly is in confident mood, having won his class at the recent Rali Terras d’Aboboreira in Portugal just two weeks ago, while his Turkish rivals both claimed stage wins in Sweden. Belgian rookie Thomas Martens currently holds sixth in the points’ standings and will be looking to close the gap on the leading quintet. Likewise, German Claire Schönborn was the inaugural winner of the Beyond Rally Women’s Driver Development Programme and will be keen to add further points to her tally on her second gravel rally after competing in Portugal recently.
Frenchman Tristan Charpentier ran strongly at the ERC event in Hungary last weekend and Paraguay’s Diego Dominguez won his class at this event in 2024. South African Max Smart, Estonia’s Joosep Ralf Nõgene and Jordan’s Shaker Jweihan round off the 12-strong field. The latter is the defending FIA MERC2 champion, joins the series for the first time and will tackle the remaining four rounds of the championship.
The current FIA Junior WRC gives young talent the opportunity to showcase their skills in identical M-Sport Poland Ford Fiesta Rally3 Evos running on Hankook tyres.
The concept started life as the FIA Super 1600 Championship for Drivers in 2001 and the inaugural series was won by none other than Sébastien Loeb. It was renamed as the FIA Junior World Rally Championship the following year and Dani Solà claimed the laurels.
Renamed the WRC Academy Cup for two years in 2011 and 2012, honours on those occasions fell to the late Craig Breen and current WRC leader Elfyn Evans. The series was rebranded as the FIA Junior WRC between 2013 and 2021 and Robert Virves then won the FIA WRC3 Junior series in 2022. Irishman William Creighton and the current champion Romet Jürgensen, from Estonia, won the last two under the current name – the FIA Junior WRC.