Flanked by the Swede, Mikael Ericsson and the new young German talent, Armin Schwarz, the driver was once again on the brink of triggering surprise in the Monte Carlo event, proving himself capable of doing battle with Lancia on a terrain which but three months before, in Italy, had seemed to exceed the performance of the new Lancia Delta Integrale 16 V. Only the sudden and mysterious horsepower increase, an occurrence which took place on the night of Turini, allowed Lancia to gain leadership of the world championship. This fact combined with Toyota�s newly empty score sheet, a handicap which the Japanese manufacturer had to struggle against throughout the year, permitted Lancia to dream of a new world championship title, with a third consecutive triumph in Africa.

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Nonetheless, the masterly victory of Bjorn Waldegaard in one of the most difficult Safari Rallies ever, in which the Turin brand had its own personal stop, helped to partly recover starting positions. The events of Monte Carlo were confirmed in Corsica when the Toyota Celica GT-Four emphasized its chances at victory in a typically asphalt race, such as that in which only the achievement of the team mechanics of Lancia saved them by replacing the differential of the Didier Auriol vehicle in twenty-four minutes, thereby allowing the French driver to collect the title for the third consecutive time.�

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Toyota and Carlos Sainz were finally rewarded with a win in Greece, breaking what had seemed like a curse on the Spanish driver, in an event which had seen the team obliged to leave by the back door the previous year. Toyota automatically extended its participation programme in order to fight for a driver title which Lancia decided to abstain from. As a result, Sainz came, saw and conquered alone in New Zealand, returning with a margin of 25 points. The Toyota driver was on the point of winning in Argentina, on the occasion of Toyota�s first participation in the country, when an error in reading his notes ended in his Celica GT-Four overturning, although the second position was retained thanks to mechanical problems in Auriol�s and Kankkunen�s Lancias.

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And just in case any doubts remained, in Finland the driver from Madrid wrote the most important page of his career, and of the Rally World Championships in general, in gold, when he drove to an unforgettable victory while still suffering physical wounds from an accident he had had when training. Lancia was delayed a certain amount in Australia, where Kankkunen was first over the finishing line, ahead of Sainz who was discovering the peculiarities of the track.

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The decisive event of San Remo had arrived, a race that was traditionally reserved for the Italians. For the third year running, the Repsol driver was on the brink of proving those who had denied his talents as a world-class driver wrong. It was only due to an error in the last section of the terrain track, while trying to gain the maximum advantage possible before getting to the asphalt track, that Sainz decided to throw in the towel for Toyota in an effort to save his own leadership of the Drivers World Championship. Third place was sufficient. In Italy, Carlos Sainz obtained a well-deserved victory for the first time, after two years on the world circuit. This, however, was not all. At the same time he achieved something less tangible, but even more important: he made the general public aware of the spectacle and emotion inherent in the world of motor sports, and more specifically in the world of rallies.

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The Lancia policy of playing with three pawns: Juha Kankkunen, Massimo Biasion and Didier Auriol, without making a specific decision on who should face the Spanish driver, turned out to be a huge error given that at the end of the season the Finnish driver had better chances on the close of the season than his colleagues, even though he was the worst classified of the three. Carlos Sainz did not rest on his laurels once he had obtained the title, despite the fact the Brands also decided in favour of the Italians in Italy.� The Spanish driver turned to the English RAC and this time he didn�t allow victory to slip through his fingers, thereby ending the fourteen year long string of Nordic driver victories.