Harri Rovanpera Q&A

"It's really hard to explain. I suppose I was thinking about it a bit this afternoon, even though I tried not to, but now that I've won my first world championship rally I can't really believe it. All I know at the moment is that it's a good thing, not a bad thing!"



"Not as much as some people would expect. I knew he'd have to be more than one or two cars behind me to take advantage of the cleaner road if it snowed. So last night, I stayed up to watch the television report and then went to bed. I slept very well. But when I got up today and saw the snow, I started thinking that Tommi would be strong. I pushed hard, and it was enough."



"It's far too early to talk about that! I've got a test for Portugal next week and that's one of my favourite events, so I'm looking forward to trying to score my second win in a few weeks' time..."



It seems strange to say it, but Harri Rovanpera's first world championship win - in his debut outing in a Peugeot 206 WRC - is not the most unexpected of the Finn's career. Back in 1996, he left British championship regulars dumbfounded by taking a Group N Mitsubishi to victory on the Scottish Rally.

I wasn't reporting then, so my first meeting with the man came at Sweet Lamb, sometime in February 1998. Rovanpera had been picked by SEAT UK to front its first season with the Ibiza kit car in the British championship, and a handful of journos were invited to sit alongside the rising star on one of the country's most famous stages.

As luck would have it, I was first in - because the Ibiza gave up the ghost barely halfway through the test. Rovanpera's English is patchy now but back then, it was virtually non-existent and the team had to go through the agony of hearing a journalist on the radio, informing them that their car had broken down.

SEAT offered Harri his best chance of landing a World Rally Car and he was handed much of the early development of the Cordoba WRC, but he had limited experience of either work on a brand new car, or the sophisticated engine and transmission electronics that make the difference in the modern era.

The team's engineers weren't much better off either, and Harri often had to carry the can for a project whose results never matched its profile. When Toni Gardemeister landed the seat alongside Didier Auriol for 2000 - and Harri found himself on the sidelines - many observers reckoned he'd been made a scapegoat. The Cordoba's continuing problems backed that theory up.

Harri has the same management team behind him as Tommi Makinen, Juha Kankkunen and - ironically - Gardemeister, yet his deal with Peugeot, confirmed just after the Rally GB last year, still took some by surprise. But by then, he'd already starred in a relatively old Toyota in both Portugal and Finland, hinting at untapped potential. Those performances almost certainly persuaded Peugeot team manager Jean-Pierre Nicolas to give Rovanpera a chance in a competitive works car.

His first chance in that car started on Friday, and this afternoon he won the rally, but it's too early to talk about Rovanpera in the same terms as Marcus Gronholm. For starters, he's still a completely unproven quantity on asphalt (Marcus had shown potential there in 1999), and his programme is still undecided in any case. But on loose surfaces at least, Peugeot now has yet another decent shot at victory, alongside Gronholm and Auriol. By taking two chances in the last three seasons and biding his time, Nicolas appears to have accumulated a formidable driving force - and probably for a fraction of the money that other teams have splashed out. For that, he is to be congratulated.