How Rovanpera left his rivals to marvel at his Canary Islands speed

Sometimes in sport you simply have to sit back and marvel when athletes produce sheer brilliance.

Rally Islas Canarias, making its World Rally Championship debut, provided one of those moments as Kalle Rovanpera and co-driver Jonne Halttunen delivered one of the most dominant victories in recent series history. A win that made the rally community sit up and take notice.

Among those was eight-time world champion Sebastien Ogier who was left trailing in the Finn’s wake to the tune of 53.5 seconds, a lifetime in asphalt rallying. Ogier knows a thing or two about dominating rallies during his glittering career, but even the Frenchman was unable to answer Rovanpera. He had to join those marvelling at how the 24-year-old Finn won 15 of 18 stages to blitz his rivals without pushing to the limit, scoring a perfect 35 points in the process.

“Unfortunately for me and all the drivers, Kalle was just in a very different league this weekend and produced a performance that we do not see every often in this sport,” Ogier told Autosport. This was the very definition of a statement victory from Rovanpera and Toyota. It was a one-sided affair on two levels. The latter had clearly done its homework preparing for an all-new asphalt rally, pulling off a 1-2-3-4 while Hyundai and M-Sport-Ford were left floundering.

How Rovanpera hauled himself into the title race

As a two-time champion, the world has seen what Rovanpera can produce when at the peak of his powers. But what made this latest domination perhaps the most standout of his career was the quality of the opposition he was up against, and that there has been no sign of this coming before the event.

Up until this weekend Rovanpera had endured a subdued start to the season with struggles in unlocking the pace on the new-for-2025 Hankook rubber. The Finn admitted in Monte Carlo and Sweden that speed was not coming naturally and that he had been forced to change his driving style. After finishing fourth and fifth in Monte Carlo and Sweden, an electrical issue forced him out of Kenya, while sitting in fifth.

However, everything clicked on the smooth asphalt mountain roads of Rally Islas Canarias that were as “close to circuit racing as rallying gets”, according to Hyundai’s Ott Tanak. Rovanpera unlocked the secrets of the hard compound tyre while maximising Toyota’s meticulous preparation work in nailing its base set-up. This was a rally where Rovanpera had no previous experience. In fact only five of the Rally1 field – Thierry Neuville, Adrien Fourmaux, Sami Pajari, Gregoire Munster and Josh McErlean – had some knowledge of the event from its time on the European Rally Championship and Intercontinental Rally Challenge schedule.

The signs that Rovanpera was back on form arrived when he topped the shakedown. At this point he knew the hard compound tyre was more to his liking and he’d learned the trick to get it to perform. “It is nice to see for once the pace was there when it felt good, nothing crazy, normal driving and everything works,” said Rovanpera on Thursday. “I think performance-wise it [the tyre] doesn’t look so bad and then what we see on the long stages is that this tyre needs to be driven gently and I think the key will be not to overheat the tyre. The drivers that can do that the best will be the fastest.”

Those words would ring true. Rovanpera was 6.5s clear of the field after the opening test in a performance he said “didn’t feel good” as stage-end interviews returned following a resolution to a dispute over swearing sanctions with the FIA before the event.

A clean sweep of stage wins on Friday followed as Rovanpera built up a 26.8s lead over Ogier, with championship leader and Toyota team-mate Evans a further 9.6s adrift. The writing was on the wall for his rivals who knew they needed to find something special to fight for victory. It wasn’t all plain sailing though, as Rovanpera’s co-driver Halttunen had been struggling with pain coming from his jaw that renders him silent on road sections to limit the discomfort. “I think we have found some ideas and a way to go with the car, especially with these new tyres, and I think that makes the biggest difference,” said Rovanpera. “At the end he [Jonne] was fine but it was more about when he was eating, but actually on the stage we were OK.”

By Saturday thoughts soon turned to the prospect of Rovanpera emulating WRC legend Sebastien Loeb, who famously won all the stages in Corsica in 2005. Rovanpera’s streak of fastest times extended to 12 consecutive stages. The run was only halted on Saturday night’s crowd-favourite super special that featured a section inside the CB Gran Canaria basketball court, as Evans took the stage win by 0.1s from Ogier.

“Everybody is saying ‘Kalle is back’ but last year he did seven rallies and won four so he hasn’t lost anything. Everything is just working now at 100% and, when Kalle is driving at 100%, the others have to do so as well. He’s a fast boy” Juha Kankkunen

But the game was up for his rivals who were left stunned by Rovanpera’s pace that had resulted in a 45.2s lead. “I think it is pretty close [to perfection],” said Rovanpera. “There is no need to push. I can choose myself when I want to push or not, it is quite enjoyable. It has been quite a long time since we have had the pace so good we can choose when to use it.”

Rovanpera added three more stage wins on Sunday, only losing out on a super special on a kart track to Ogier, Fourmaux and WRC2 leader Yohan Rossel, who set identical times. Ogier then finally achieved his quest to score at least one proper stage win on the penultimate test Aguimes – Santa Lucia.

Rovanpera can be quite reserved during some of his most impressive performances but, after claiming the maximum points haul with an emphatic Power Stage win, there was plenty of emotion as he declared “we are back” before jumping on the roof of his car. “It has to be one of the best rallies we have done,” said Rovanpera. “It is not so common these days that you can do a weekend where you are just all the time faster than the others, so I also think this is special.”

Ogier was able to pinch a few stage wins off Rovanpera, but had no answer to his outright pace

Photo by: Toyota Racing

When asked if he felt his circuit racing outings last year had helped deliver such a performance given the nature of the roads, he added: “It is really difficult to say as it is difficult to compare. It is still a rally car and on narrow road compared to a circuit. I don’t really care where the speed comes from if it is like this.”

In the context of the formbook this season, the win can be seen as a surprise result, although four-time world champion and Toyota’s deputy team principal Juha Kankkunen never felt Rovanpera had left the championship conversation. “If you think about it everybody is saying ‘Kalle is back’ but last year he did seven rallies and won four so he hasn’t lost anything,” Kankkunen told Autosport. “Everything is just working now at 100% and, when Kalle is driving at 100%, the others have to do so as well. He’s a fast boy.”

Is this the start of a Rovanpera third title tilt?

Rovanpera’s win has vaulted the Finn from sixth to second in the standings, some 43 points behind team-mate Evans, but this could be start of an epic chase for a third world title. “It [the points gap] is still a lot but at least now we managed to get more points than him [Elfyn] for the first time this season, so that is a good starting point and we need to do some more,” said Rovanpera.

For Evans, there was frustration finishing third, 1m17.1s adrift while maintaining his 100% run of podiums this season. “It is still very early days in the championship so it doesn’t really mean a lot,” Evans reflected. “All I look at is the weekend and we lost 15 points, so in the end it is hard to be happy with that, but it could be worse. I think the frustration is I went searching for improvement early in the rally and I probably lost a bit of ground. In certain moments I wasn’t far from Seb but I gave away far too much and pulled myself out of the fight doing that. Kalle was clearly untouchable this weekend and he clearly had a natural style to drive the car and the tyre, the speed he was able to show was incredible.”

Toyota locked out the top four positions with Takamoto Katsuta enjoying a solid and mistake-free run to fourth. Such was Toyota’s dominance, it was on course for a 1-2-3-4-5, before Pajari ran wide and into barriers to drop out of fourth on Saturday afternoon. There was no denying Toyota had clearly done its homework in preparing for the Canary Islands’ clean, fast and flowing roads.

What went wrong for Hyundai and M-Sport?

In contrast, Toyota’s rivals Hyundai and M-Sport were downgraded to also-rans with both suffering similar issues in adapting to the tyre and the road surface.

In Hyundai’s case, technical director FX Demaison admitted that the team had felt reasonably confident after Neuville had beaten Evans for pace during a test rally in Spanish roads in Sierra Morena earlier this month. But, after Saturday, Demaison claimed the team had “underestimated the difficulty of the rally”.

Reigning champion Neuville was a distant seventh, as Hyundai’s pace deficit came as a shock to the team

Photo by: Austral / Hyundai Motorsport

Hyundai threw the kitchen sink at trying to rectify its understeer and handling issues that left all of its drivers struggling for confidence. But, ultimately, the problem highlighted a fundamental issue with its upgraded 2025 i20 N around the differential that was made worse by the hard compound tyre. With most components, such as the differential, sealed for the event, Hyundai simply couldn’t find a way to close the gap as Saturday and Sunday became glorified test sessions. “It became an intensive test session for us where we tried a lot of different things on the car,” Demaison explained. “On tough weekends like this, you learn a lot of very interesting things which we believe will not only unlock performance for us on Tarmac, but on gravel as well. We will now take everything we have learned from these setbacks to come back stronger at the next events.”

Luckily for Hyundai the team won’t face conditions like this again this year, but it does have a homologation joker up its sleeve it could deploy should it need it to rectify the problems for asphalt rounds in central Europe and Japan. “There are things in the car which are sealed that doesn’t allow us to get the maximum out of these tyres,” Demaison added. “For sure [we could consider using our last joker]. When we see where we are, and if a joker can bring us to where we should be, we will do it.”

Fourmaux ultimately emerged as the best of the Hyundais, with the Frenchman joking that he’d won the “Hyundai Cup” finishing fifth overall some 2m31s behind Rovanpera. Tanak, forced to undergo an engine change on Saturday night, finished sixth ahead of Neuville who suffered a puncture on Sunday. Both were dejected by the events that had unfolded. “I think it’s the worst we’ve been across all three crews, with none of us able to compete at the front,” Tanak lamented. “We didn’t do our homework and we weren’t prepared for this event, and Toyota set the bar very high – it was a great job from them.”

“If you are not in this window and not so confident you then start to drive differently as they [the drivers] are not sure where the limit of the grip [is]. Then you end up overcompensating and taking a tighter line and losing time from your style as well as the tyres and set-up” Richard Millener

Neuville was equally frustrated: “We were in a beautiful country and I think we came here more as a tourist than racing driver this weekend. Something went wrong and we will put the finger on it and altogether try to dig even deeper to find what it is.”

It was a similar case from M-Sport, which was unable to get the Puma into the right operational window as Munster finished 11th behind WRC2 top three, Rossel, Alejandro Cachon and Nikolay Gryazin. M-Sport rookie Josh McErlean crashed out of 10th on Sunday morning.

“It is quite a specialist rally – we used to see it in Rally Catalunya, you have to be super smooth and super-fast and it is not easy to do,” said M-Sport team principal Richard Millener. “The window is really tight and I think the other problem is if you are not in this window and not so confident you then start to drive differently as they [the drivers] are not sure where the limit of the grip [is]. Then you end up overcompensating and taking a tighter line and losing time from your style as well as the tyres and set-up. It all compounds into bigger and bigger time losses.”

Hyundai and M-Sport were simply unable to get their cars in the best operating window on the smooth asphalt

Photo by: M-Sport

Canary Islands delivers on WRC debut

Rally Islas Canarias may not have provided a barnstorming fight for victory, but that shouldn’t detract from what was a very impressive debut on the world stage. The passion for rallying in Spain and, particularly this island, was evident to see with nearly 200,000 fans taking in the rally. Approximately 12,000 flocked to see the crews tackle donuts surrounded by the raucous atmosphere of a packed basketball arena. It was perhaps one of the most unusual stages, yet impactful in terms of bringing rallying to the people.

“It has been incredible,” said WRC2 driver Oliver Solberg. “It has been a bit long in terms of hours for such short mileage but otherwise it was fantastic and the stages were absolutely beautiful and I have never seen so many fans in my whole life. I have gained 10,000 followers in the last week, social media has gone mental, so it is fantastic. My first donuts in the arena were horrible and I thought Ken Block is going to be disappointed with me but my second donuts were brilliant. This is the perfect rally to showcase what we need and how to get it more out to the people. The people are there we just need to show it to them.”

Beautiful, well organised stages, incredible atmosphere and hordes of passionate fans will make this event hard for organisers to ignore when it comes to mapping out future WRC calendars. If Rovanpera returns next year, it will also be hard to stop him.

Will Rovanpera’s win be his springboard to a 2025 WRC title tilt?

Photo by: Toyota Racing