How Rally Finland produced a rollercoaster of emotions to match its roads

At last it seemed that Finnish rally fans would finally receive what they had craved so much. Not since 2015 has there been a home winner of Rally Finland. But still the wait goes on.

Kalle Rovanpera had dominated the stages and tamed changeable weather on what was one of the most demanding editions of the event on record. But once again, he was cruelly denied. This time, penultimate stage heartbreak allowed fellow Toyota part-timer Sebastien Ogier to steal the spoils and mount an unlikely World Rally Championship title push.

Rovanpera has now had four attempts to win the fabled ‘Gravel Grand Prix’. In 2021 he suffered a crash, the following year he finished second behind an inspired Ott Tanak, and now the past two years he’s rolled out of the lead. The 23-year-old two-time world champion has proven himself to be a once-in-a-generation talent who has rewritten the record books, but it appears that he is following in the unfortunate footsteps of another Finnish great.

“It's the same case as Juha Kankkunen [four-time world champion] as it took him more than 10 years to win the home event, and it seems to be a bit the same thing on his [Rovanpera’s] shoulder,” summed up Toyota team principal Jari-Matti Latvala – the last local to win Rally Finland.

The collective sigh around the nation as Rovanpera clipped a rock that put him into the trees could almost be felt. Ogier’s reaction to clinching an unlikely 61st career victory, and his second in Finland, summed up the mood perfectly.

“It [the rally] was a little bit too brutal, if you ask me,” sighed the eight-time WRC champion. “I would honestly prefer being second right now, but motorsport is like this sometimes, sometimes it's unfair. I lost the win in Sardinia [this year] with bad luck; today I got it with luck.”

Ogier admitted he'd been lucky to win after Rovanpera's event was dramatically cut short

Photo by: McKlein / Motorsport Images

Rewind to the start of the week, and the mood was very different. The eve of Rally Finland has an almost Christmas Eve vibe, such is the excitement for one of the jewels of the WRC crown.

This year the anticipation levels were higher thanks to the reintroduction of what is arguably rallying’s greatest stage – the full-length 32.98km rollercoaster ride that is Ouninpohja, its return aided by the introduction of a virtual chicane to slow the 500bhp Rally1 beasts. The GPS in-car warning system alerting crews to slow down to 60km/h for the chicane was, however, widely derided by drivers. While Ouninpohja is known for producing drama, there was plenty of that before the crews engaged/disengaged their brains to tackle a road that requires the utmost respect and commitment.

Championship leader Thierry Neuville maintained his title of Super Special stage king by winning Thursday night’s mixed-surface Harju stage in host city Jyvaskyla – where Rovanpera grew up. It was a short-lived lead for the Hyundai star, with overnight rain and further showers producing incredibly slippery conditions, capable of catching out the best.

Tanak’s roll occurred moments after team-mate and overnight leader Neuville was outfoxed by the conditions but, luckily for the Belgian, it cost him only 13 seconds when he overshot a junction

Making his Rally1 debut in a fifth Toyota-run GR Yaris, which the Finn labelled as a “moment of truth” for his burgeoning rally career, WRC2 title contender and rising star Sami Pajari was the first to overstep the limits of adhesion. Pajari suffered a half-spin before running wide into a ditch on stage two, Laukaa, damaging his rear wing. This made the car challenging to drive for the remaining stages of the loop. “It’s really tricky, I don’t know where I am,” confessed the bewildered Pajari.

Tanak was next to run off the road, but the 2019 world champion wasn’t able to recover it. The rear of his Hyundai stepped out on a left-hander on stage three (Saarikas) before pitching into a roll and colliding with a tree. The stage was red-flagged to allow medical crews to attend to Tanak and co-driver Martin Jarveoja. The pair clambered out of their overturned car and, while Tanak was OK, Jarveoja was airlifted to a nearby hospital for precautionary checks, although he was discharged the following day.

Hyundai retired the car from the reminder of the rally, meaning Tanak would leave Finland without any championship points. “Martin will take some time to recover, but the plan is for us to be in the car for Greece [next month],” reckoned Tanak.

Tanak’s roll occurred moments after team-mate and overnight leader Neuville was outfoxed by the conditions but, luckily for the Belgian, it cost him only 13 seconds when he overshot a junction. At the front, the lead changed hands four times across the morning loop as Toyota trio Ogier, Rovanpera and Elfyn Evans enjoyed spells at the top of the leaderboard, before Rovanpera won stage five (Ruuhimaki) to head to midday service with a 0.2s advantage over Evans.

Tanak's rally was brief, the Estonian out with a violent accident on Friday

Photo by: Fabien Dufour / Hyundai Motorsport

Toyota had been on course for a 1-2-3-4, but this symmetry was altered on stage five when Takamoto Katsuta ran slightly wide and clipped a tree, which left his right-rear wheel dragging behind his GR Yaris. It eventually fell off on a road section as he valiantly tried to return to service, which spelled an unfortunate retirement.

“The stages were very tricky and the conditions were changing a lot,” recounted Katsuta, who rejoined the rally on Saturday. “It was very difficult to judge which corner is slippy and which is not. I decided to push at the beginning of this rally and the target was to get a good result, so I was trying.”

Katsuta’s exit promoted the Hyundai of Esapekka Lappi to fourth, but the wet weather meant that the afternoon passes of the stages had become incredibly rutted. One such area on Laukaa (stage six) caught the Finn by surprise, sending him into the trees.

“The ruts were really deep and I knew that, but I was not expecting that I would bounce off because they were so deep I thought it wasn’t possible,” explained Lappi. “I couldn’t do anything. It’s a shame as I think it was possible to fight: beat them? I’m not sure but fight? Yes. I think it has been the most challenging Rally Finland I have done.”

With Rovanpera nosing ahead in the slippery conditions he usually relishes, there was a feeling growing that maybe it would be his time to win. Two-time world champion Marcus Gronholm was convinced. “He has to win this rally,” he smiled. “He is young, he has won a lot but not Rally Finland – he will take it.”

Two more stage wins added to his pair of fastest times in the morning helped Rovanpera into an eight-second lead over Evans, with Ogier a further 0.6s back in third. Neuville, unhappy with the handling of his Hyundai, was fourth, 25.5s adrift.

But the story of the day belonged to another young Finn. Since his stage two excursion, the 22-year-old Pajari had steadily begun to show his speed across the afternoon, culminating in a maiden stage victory at only his ninth attempt, when he beat Ogier by 0.5s. To put Pajari’s feat into context, it took Rovanpera 25 attempts to claim a maiden WRC stage win.

“I thought before the rally that it would be nice but I thought it would be like too much, so I was not expecting anything like this – it means quite a lot,” grinned Pajari, who ended Friday in sixth overall behind the M-Sport Ford Puma of Adrien Fourmaux.

Pajari was elated to score a first stage victory on his Rally1 debut, ultimately finishing in fourth

Photo by: Toyota Racing

“I would say that he [Pajari] showed that he's mature enough to handle this kind of situation,” said Toyota sporting director Kaj Lindstrom, who was standing in for Latvala while the Finn competed in the WRC2 class. “It was a difficult start, but he was able to reset and was calm enough to bring the car home like we asked him to. He went out in the afternoon and drove really well. I think the stage win was like the cherry on the cake.”

The challenging conditions and inconsistent grip continued into Saturday. Gregoire Munster had avoided the drama to sit seventh before becoming the latest to visit the scenery when he lost the rear of his M-Sport Puma in stage 11 (Vastila). It resulted in a sizeable accident that would require several hours to fix for a Sunday return.

More drama followed in the next stage, but this time for Rovanpera’s nearest rival Evans. The Welshman has suffered more than his fair share of misfortune this season, including punctures in Kenya, Portugal and Sardinia. This time his GR Yaris’s driveshaft suddenly failed.

Saturday was another exhibition from Rovanpera. Despite seemingly being followed by rain showers, he swept to five wins from six stages to open up a 44.2s lead

Evans was forced to limp through this test and the famous Ouninpohja, losing more than six minutes and dropping to eighth. To rub salt into the wounds, an issue Toyota described as “unusual” had caused further damage to his GR Yaris, resulting in a lengthy repair and a 2m40s penalty for being late out of service, meaning he would miss out on Saturday points.

“There's nothing you can do,” said Evans. “There's no point in crying about it, you just have to get on with it.” This allowed Rovanpera to increase his lead, with Ogier, championship leader Neuville and Fourmaux next up.

In truth, Saturday was another exhibition from Rovanpera. Despite seemingly being followed by rain showers, he swept to five wins from six stages to open up a 44.2s lead over Ogier.

This dominant run included victories on both passes through the fast, sweeping curves, blind crests and huge jumps of Ouninpohja, the first time he had ever driven this version of the stage. The second run smashed Kris Meeke’s 2016 stage record by 23.9s and was achieved at an eye-watering 136km/h average speed. But building the lead was not the only motivation for this push.

Driveshaft issues took Evans out of the lead fight, before he crashed attempting to make up ground on Sunday

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Referencing his dad Harri Rovanpera, he said: “I remember him always talking that he made some really good times there, so of course I needed to be also a bit fast so he is not the only fast one on Ouninpohja in the family. My engineer has already calculated that – of course, they didn't have any chicanes, and I think it was two kilometres longer – if you take two kilometres out, the cars at that time were like 30 or 40 seconds slower than us now.”

Prior to tackling the stage, Neuville described Ouninpohja as “a piece of art, and it's a proper rollercoaster. When everything goes well, it's one of the most beautiful moments you can live in a rally car; if it doesn't work as you want, it is the worst.” It was definitely the latter for the Hyundai man with his ill-handling i20 N.

“To be honest, I was afraid all run long, I was happy to be at the finish,” he said. Hyundai ‘turned the car upside down’ throughout the rally to try to find fixes, but little progress was made. Returning team-mate Lappi was also unable to enjoy the stage, suffering a right-front puncture on each pass.

Now only the four Sunday stages stood between Rovanpera and a highly anticipated home win. Two more fastest times to start the day took him to 11 stage wins for the event as his lead grew again. And then the party was put on hold for another year as shock engulfed the service park, after a rock on the final corner of stage 19 pitched a helpless Rovanpera into a high-speed roll.

“It is a quite unbelievable feeling when you do the whole weekend perfectly, the team and everybody has done a great job, and we were so fast and had no moments or issues, all the time we were in control,” mused a crestfallen Rovanpera. “Then something like this happens and you cannot avoid it.”

This was the second incident on the stage to deal a body blow to Toyota. Minutes earlier Evans, desperate to salvage Super Sunday points, had found the trees on the first corner and his championship bid took another damaging hit. Evans has dropped to fourth in the standings, now 36 points behind.

“For the championship, it is looking difficult now and we've definitely done a lot of damage this weekend,” reflected Evans. “In the end, we had to give it a shot, let’s say, but for the rest of the year, it’s still all open, and we'll continue to give our best until the end.”

Rovanpera had been in total control until his dramatic Sunday retirement, which meant he scored no points after topping the Saturday classification either

Photo by: Toyota Racing

It left Ogier to inherit the lead and the victory to give Toyota a somewhat subdued win on home soil, with the team still in shock at what had occurred so close to the finish, and now 20 points behind rival Hyundai in the manufacturers’ standings.

Visibly saddened by what had happened to Rovanpera, Ogier struggled to smile, despite being firmly in the hunt for a record-equalling ninth world title – he’s just 27 points behind Neuville – should he wish to extend his partial campaign by four events. In two weeks’ time, Toyota expects an answer from Ogier about driving more rallies.

For Neuville, Finland could be a decisive point in his pursuit of a maiden world title thanks to his 23-point boost

The late drama promoted Neuville to second and Fourmaux, who drove smartly throughout given a lack of pre-event testing, to third. Meanwhile, Pajari’s remarkable debut ended with a fourth place. The top six was completed by leading WRC2 duo Oliver Solberg and Latvala.

For Neuville, Finland could be a decisive point in his pursuit of a maiden world title thanks to his 23-point boost over scoreless rivals Tanak and Evans. Given the events that unfolded, his summary was perfect in saying that “this weekend has been a rollercoaster of emotions for everybody”.

Drama befalling his nearest rivals allowed Neuville to finish second and extend his points lead

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool