Rovanpera’s “different league” dominance rarely seen in WRC

Kalle Rovanpera was in a “different league” and produced a Rally Islas Canarias event domination ‘rarely seen’ in the World Rally Championship, according to eight-time world champion Sebastien Ogier.

Rovanpera and co-driver Jonne Halttunen were virtually untouchable on the Canary Islands’ smooth asphalt roads, winning 15 of the 18 stages en route to a first win of the season, igniting their pursuit of a third world title.

After a slow start to the campaign highlighted by struggles to adapt to the new Hankook tyres, Rovanpera managed to unlock the secrets of the new rubber, maximised by driving a Toyota GR Yaris clearly suited to the conditions.

To underline the performance, Rovanpera’s more experienced team-mate Ogier, renowned for his speed on asphalt, was rarely able to offer an answer to the Finn’s pace, finishing 53.5s behind.

“There is a lot of positive and satisfaction out of the weekend. First of all we nearly got a perfect team result and that was the priority for me these days,” Ogier told Autosport. 

“Secondly, I still believe my performance was pretty ok this weekend but at the same time 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. 

“I have sometimes been in this situation [Kalle was in] in my career, but it doesn’t happen so often that there is such a clear domination of a single event. 

“It was pretty obvious he was very comfortable, because to be able to win nearly every stage, it means you have something. 

“We tried our best to improve the set-up at the beginning of the weekend, which was not really giving me the best confidence, but if I’m honest towards the end of the rally I was pretty happy with the car.”

Ogier’s high praise for Rovanpera was followed by four-time world champion and Toyota’s deputy team principal Juha Kankkunen labelling the Finn’s performance as a “10 out of 10” drive.

Reflecting on the weekend, Rovanpera admitted it was one the best of his 16 WRC wins to date, coming on a surface where he triumphed only once before, in Croatia in 2023.

“It has to be one of the best rallies we have done. It is not so common these days that you can do a weekend where you are just all the time faster than all the others,” Rovanpera told Autosport.

“I’ve not had so many clean tarmac rallies during my Rally1 career, let’s say I don’t like the dirty tarmac rallies, but this kind of rally is one of my favourites.”