Team MRF Tyres wins the 2026 FIA European Rally Championship teams' title, sealed in Portugal on 25 October

India's biggest motorsport result of the past fortnight did not happen in India. It happened in the hills above Fafe in northern Portugal, where Latvian driver Martins Sesks won the final round of the 2026 FIA European Rally Championship on 25 October and confirmed Team MRF Tyres as the season's teams' champion.

The team closed the year on 233 points, 98 clear of second-placed Racing Factory Motorsport Solutions, according to Autocar India's report on 26 October. MRF's own motorsport site carries the same confirmation, saying the team was crowned 2026 FIA ERC Teams' Champion after Rally 6 Cities North of Portugal. It is the Chennai company's fourth ERC teams' title, after 2022, 2023 and 2025.

How the last rally played out

Sesks, in a Skoda Fabia RS Rally2 on MRF rubber, took his fifth career ERC win and finished more than a minute ahead of Pablo Sarrazin, DirtFish reported. His MRF team mate Roope Korhonen, in a Toyota GR Yaris Rally2, led going into the closing stages before a broken rear differential left him running in front-wheel drive, which dropped him to third and let Sarrazin through on the power stage. Kris Meeke, among the favourites for the win, crashed out on stage four.

Autocar India's account of the same rally adds that Sesks had his own trouble, with damper problems after leg one costing him the lead before Korhonen's failure handed it back. Sesks said the pace he and his rivals were setting meant he had to push hard, and that choosing not to take risks at the end paid off.

The drivers' title had already been settled a round earlier, with Teemu Suninen crowned champion at Rali Ceredigion in Wales. Miko Marczyk finished second in the standings and Andrea Mabellini third. Sesks himself ended the year fifth in the drivers' table despite starting only two rallies, because he scored maximum points in Portugal.

Tyre supplier and team are two different fights

It is worth separating the two championships MRF contests in Europe, because they are often confused. Team MRF Tyres is a registered team, and that is the title it won. MRF is also one of four tyre suppliers scoring points across the series, and in that fight the FIA ERC's own round-up, published on 27 October, placed MRF third on 212 points behind Pirelli on 279 and Michelin on 264, with Hankook fourth on 184. Portugal was MRF's first outright ERC win of the 2026 season.

Why an Indian tyre maker bothers with European gravel

MRF moved into the ERC in 2020 after years of success in the Asia Pacific Rally Championship, and uses the European series as a development programme for its rally tyres across tarmac, gravel and mixed surfaces, as Autocar India notes. That is the commercial logic. A European season throws cold Scandinavian gravel, Roman asphalt in July heat and Portuguese mountain stages at the same compound family in seven months, which is a harder brief than any single national championship can set.

For Indian readers used to seeing MRF branding on everything from club autocross to the national circuit racing grids, this is the same company winning a continental title in a series run by the WRC promoter, against suppliers with far bigger rally budgets. The 2027 ERC season has not been announced in detail yet, so there is nothing confirmed about MRF's next European campaign.

Sources

• MRF Motorsport official site
• Autocar India: MRF wins 2026 European Rally Championship
• FIA ERC: Celebration time, Pirelli's ERC Tyre Supplier title, MRF's win
• DirtFish: Sesks rounds out 2026 with ERC Portugal win
• UNI India: MRF Tyres wins 4th FIA European Rally Championship