Re-assessing Rovanperä’s start to the season

The words ‘Kalle’, ‘Rovanperä’ and ‘wins’ are becoming the bywords of the 2022 World Rally Championship season.

Four victories from the last five and some patchy from the rest have earned Rovanperä a commanding 65-point lead in the championship. To put that further into context, his lead is larger than the points total of all the other drivers bar Thierry Neuville.

A world champion in waiting? Quite possibly. But Rovanperä is far from the only driver to put one hand on the trophy after the first half of a WRC season.

Two months ago, following the third round of the season in Croatia where Rovanperä had established a 29-point cushion, we analyzed his searing start to the season in comparison with other dominant campaigns in history.

After crunching the numbers, we learned that Rovanperä’s first three rounds of 2022 were the seventh most dominant in history – measured by examining the percentage of championship points available he had claimed.

Now with 145 on the board from a possible 180, Rovanperä’s performance has become even more dominant after six rounds of the season as this table shows.

Most dominant WRC campaigns after six rounds:

Only four times in history has a driver enjoyed a better start to the season than Rovanperä – no prizes for guessing that they were by drivers named Sébastien.

Despite losing both of the first two rounds to Ford’s Marcus Grönholm, Loeb’s start to 2006 was electric with four straight wins (to compliment those second places) in México, Spain, Corsica and Argentina thereafter.

Fun fact for you: Loeb never finished any lower than second on any of the rounds he started in 2006, grabbing eight wins and four seconds to win the title despite missing the final four rallies through injury.

Loeb’s 2009 was similarly spectacular at the beginning as he scored 90% of the possible championship points after the first six rounds: Ireland, Norway, Cyprus, Portugal, Argentina and Sardinia.

Loeb won the first five before taking fourth in Sardinia, but that would be the beginning of the downfall that allowed Mikko Hirvonen to close in as Loeb crashed spectacularly in Greece and fumbled in Poland too.

The 2010 season was a foregone conclusion early on too as Loeb scored a podium on all but one of the 13 rounds. After the first six, Loeb had won in México, Jordan and Turkey as well as taking second spot in Sweden and Portugal and third in a dramatic Rally New Zealand.

Only one driver has scored a higher percentage of points than Rovanperä after the opening six rounds when the powerstage has been in existence, and that was Ogier back in 2014 – the second season with Volkswagen.

Although he ran away with the 2013 season and had to fend off team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala in ’14, Ogier’s second season with Polo power was more effective at the beginning with four wins and a second place, plus three powerstage wins.

Rovanperä’s start to the season has been the most dominant of the era when the top five can score powerstage points however, as the Toyota driver has racked up 80.55% of the available points.

As we said back in May, Rovanperä has won the first set but the match is there to be won. But now he’s won the second set at a canter too, the pressure is really on his rivals.

If Rovanperä wins one more set, the match will be won. He’s absolutely aced it so far.