Kalle Rovanperä would prefer to live without burgers than pizzas. He’d rather own a private jet than a private island and he thinks the best smell in the world comes from smoking tires.
I’m with him on all three. But his decision to take a World Rally Car over a Group B car is slightly more debatable.
We’re talking when we should be listening. Listening to Adele. I know, random.
This is the end. Hold your breath and count to 10.
I suggest Adele. It doesn’t go well. I’m not sure my driver’s even heard of her. Fair enough.
But this is the end. The end of Rally1. Or, at least, the end of Rally1 as we know and love it. Quite possibly the end of the fastest era or rally cars ever.
Let the sky fall, when it crumbles…
We good for the tunes? OK, I’ll leave Adele alone. You’ve got the message.
So, here we are, alongside the oddly named French Broad River, just south of the rather amusingly named Parrottsville. North Carolina is just over there, through the Bald Mountains.
Rovanperä enjoyed another run in the car that, when hybrid-boosted, took him to two world titles
It’s the day after the Overmountain Rally, the penultimate round of the ARA National Championship and Toyota has shipped its two-time world champion out west across the Atlantic to demonstrate, for one final time, what made its GR Yaris Rally1 all that.
Let’s start with the car, the post-hybrid Rally1. It ran from Monte Carlo last year until Sardinia this year. That was a total of 27 rallies. It won 24.
On those 27 rallies, there were 508 stages. It won 358 of them and led for 403 of them.
This car has crushed the past two WRC seasons.
And Kalle and I, we get one last tango.
The Finn didn't hold back, despite lack of recent seat time
Given that I have the best job in the world (OK, from where I’m sitting now, maybe the second best job in the world…), I’ve been fortunate to ride in all the Rally1 cars. Even before Rally1 was a thing, I’d joined Matthew Wilson for a dash through Greystoke in the M-Sport mule.
This stage was a couple of miles out, turn around and a couple of miles back. On gravel, part of the Overmountain powerstage. I asked if #KR69 needed notes reading, turns out he didn’t. But I didn’t want to just sit there, I wanted to do something a bit different to mark the end of an era. So, we came up with the alternative interview, the interesting questions interspersed with the burger-pizza enquiry.
Buckled up and heading for the start line, Rovanperä threw us from side to side to put some energy into the car and heat into the tires and brakes. It was that moment, once again, when things all got a bit more serious.
“You sure we should do this interview thing?” I asked.
“You’ll know if it’s not. I’ll go quiet,” was the reply with that wry smile.
“I just don’t want to make us crash.”
“We won’t. Let’s go.”
David Evans could hardly keep the grin from his face
We went. And I was straight into the questions. It was quite surreal. Despite not having driven a car like this for almost a year, he was fully committed – even while he was explaining why he would rather have a wet sock rather than a stone in his shoe. Through a flat left with a big chop across the apex, skipping a ditch, and he was pondering on which car out of his garage he would keep if he could only keep one.
I’ve never done anything like it. Trying to keep the questions rolling was almost impossible and, as we crested the finish and he flicked the car out of stage mode, I just laughed at the madness of what had just gone on. Handbraking us back to the start, we sat on the line.
“Ready for the last one?” he asked.
It was then, kind of right there it hit me. This was it. This would be, quite possibly, the last two meaningful miles I would get alongside a world champion in one of these cars. Forget the questions, the interview went out of the window. This one was for watching.
“It’s a good idea,” he said.
GR Yaris Rally1 will never be seen again on WRC stages
And with that we were into it again. How was it? Off the charts, obviously. The car was sensational, the pull and the pick-up out of slower corners was astonishing, the balance as it bounced in and out of the ruts even in the high-speed was from another world.
The handbrake-induced rotation at the apex or mid-corner adjustment, everything just felt pinpoint, accurate, dialed – even when we were sliding and dangling the right-rear in a ditch. The Rovanperä head remained angled slightly forwards, the boot hard on the gas.
It was a privilege and a total honor. And a reminder of what made this car the most successful in the history of the World Rally Championship.
I wouldn’t have wanted to say goodbye to an era and to a car with anybody else.
