Kalle Rovanperä won Rally Finland, his home round of the World Rally Championship, for the very first time in a Toyota 1-2-3-4-5 finish.
Rovanperä beat good friend Takamoto Katsuta by 39.2 seconds, with Sébastien Ogier completing the podium in third – just 3.0s ahead of Elfyn Evans who retook the championship lead from Ott Tänak.
Evans’ advantage stands at three points, with Rovanperä now up to second – 10 points ahead of Ogier and Tänak who are tied on 163 points.
Tänak won the opening Harju street stage on Thursday, but ever since the rally hit the forests on Friday, Rovanperä led. With improved feeling aboard his GR Yaris Rally1, the Finn pushed on as hard as he could – and when Hyundai duo Thierry Neuville and Adrien Fourmaux both punctured, he was untroubled at the head of field.
Avoiding any of the heartache of recent years, Rovanperä ended his home rally jinx with an extremely accomplished performance – earning a maximum 35 points with a powerstage and Super Sunday win to boot.
“Quite amazing feeling. Obviously we have been close for a few times here, and I felt we just really need to do it this year,” Rovanperä said.
“Big thanks to everyone at the workshop doing a great job with the car, we really worked hard for this one. I was driving on the limit all weekend long. Thanks to Jonne [Halttunen, co-driver] and the Finnish fans, they were amazing and we really needed the points this weekend.”
The local fans got what they wanted - a Rovanperä win!
Katsuta was among the frontrunners all weekend long, finishing 5.9 seconds ahead of Ogier.
Sami Pajari won three stages throughout the weekend to complete Toyota’s perfect finish in the country where the team is based.
Neuville took home sixth place, but team-mate Fourmaux retired from the rally just a few hundred meters from the end with a front-right puncture. He elected to pull off at the famous Kakaristo junction instead of completing the event.
That promote the rest up a place, with Josh McErlean finishing as top M-Sport in seventh after Mãrtiņš Sesks stopped on SS15 with a fogged up windshield. Grégoire Munster finished ninth, losing position to Sesks on the final stage with a flat tire.
Tänak picked up just one championship point in 10th after a difficult weekend of opening the road, hitting a tree and damaging his radiator, earning a five-minute penalty for an incident with a stewart and then finally a spin on the Ouninpohja powerstage when a tire delaminated.
Roope Korhonen claimed his very first WRC2 win by just 1.1s after an epic fight with Jari-Matti Latvala. Robert Virves was third on a weekend where championship leader Oliver Solberg scored zero after an accident on Friday.
