2023-10-29 15:54:02
If the Belgian Thierry Neuville won the Central European Rally on Sunday, the penultimate event of the 2023 World Rally Championship, the Finnish Kalle Rovanperä, 2nd, won the world title. The Toyota driver thus offered himself his second consecutive coronation at just 23 years old, displaying unprecedented precocity in the World Rally Championship.
“This year is even better than last year,” declared the Finn, welcomed at the finish line by his father Harri Rovanperä, himself a former rally driver. “I feel really good but I can’t say much else,” he added with Finnish sobriety.
Rovanperä took advantage of the exit from the track on Saturday of Elfyn Evans, his teammate at Toyota, who was the only one who could still challenge him for the title even if his chances were slim. He then just had to manage his race, letting Neuville race to victory.
In the footsteps of Loeb and Ogier
The Finn has won a total of 11 rallies in this category, including three this season with only one retirement, paradoxically at home in Finland, when he went off the road. Attention for the final event, in Japan in three weeks, will now focus on the fight for second place between Evans and Neuville who are separated by only 7 points. Estonian Ott Tänak (M-Sport Ford) finished third and Frenchman Sébastien Ogier, eight-time WRC world champion, fourth.
“No one expected that someone so young could win two championships,” said Jari-Matti Latvala, a former WRC driver himself who now leads the Toyota team in rallying. “Ogier and Loeb were already in their thirties when they won their first titles,” he recalled. Another big name in rallying, Colin McRae, now deceased, became world champion in 1995 at the age of 27.
The French Sébastien Ogier and Sébastien Loeb have won 17 titles between 2004 and 2021, 9 for Loeb and 8 for Ogier. The latter also paid tribute to Rovanperä on Sunday, highlighting “his impressive season” and adding that he was “sure that this is not his last (title)”.
Often compared to Verstappen for his precocity
The youngest driver to score points in the World Championship (Australia 2017, in his second rally at this level), Rovanperä was also the youngest to reach a WRC podium (Sweden 2020), the youngest leader of a event, in Estonia the same year, and the youngest leader in the drivers’ standings after the 2021 Arctic Rally in Finland.
At 20, he became the youngest winner of a WRC round in Estonia, dethroning his compatriot Jari-Matti Latvala, now his boss at Toyota. By his precocity, Rovanperä is often compared to the Dutchman Max Verstappen, as he passed through the Red Bull training program for apprentice drivers, whether in F1 or rallying. This comparison, “I’ve heard it before and I think it’s rather flattering,” judges the Finn. If he already has two world titles in WRC at 23, Verstappen has 3 in Formula 1 at 26.
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