In pure sporting terms, Kalle Rovanperä really doesn’t need to win this week’s round of the World Rally Championship.
But it’s Rally Finland, and he’s a Finn. Of course first place is the only result on his mind.
The past 12 months have been simply incredible for the 21-year-old. Since taking his first WRC victory in Estonia last year, Rovanperä has added six more to his collection from a possible 13 and over that time has scored 60 more championship points than anybody else.
To say he is the form driver in the WRC right now would be an understatement.
But, strangely, Rovanperä’s Finland form isn’t the most convincing. There was the high of a dominant WRC2 Pro win with a Škoda in 2019, but last year’s event was nothing short of a disaster.
That's also what I want to give for the people, that's quite clear.Kalle Rovanperä wants to deliver a home victory for Finnish fans
Arriving in Jyväskylä fresh from his second WRC win on the Acropolis Rally, the expectation was that Rovanperä would do it again in his own backyard.
But it simply wasn’t to be as Elfyn Evans grabbed hold of the event and Rovanperä, running fourth, ended his hopes on day two when he got crossed up over a jump and veered into a pile of gravel that was protecting a telegraph pole.
At the time he insisted he wasn’t under pressure because he was competing at home, and the message is the same this time around.
Asked by DirtFish if the pressure of Rally Finland can become too much, Rovanperä cooly replied: “At least last year I didn’t feel like that at all. I was actually enjoying the weekend quite a lot.”
What ultimately didn’t work for Rovanperä, and did for Evans, was the setup in 2021.
“It was not really suiting me,” Rovanperä reflected. “Hopefully this year we can make a change and also be fast.
“I think then we can enjoy the weekend.”
He’ll certainly arrive to a hero’s welcome. Finland has been bereft of a home winner since Esapekka Lappi stood atop the podium five years ago in 2017. But in Rovanperä, the home fans have arguably their best hope of a win since Jari-Matti Latvala was threading a Volkswagen Polo R WRC over the many famous crests.
The allure of a Finland win would obviously be massive for Rovanperä, but his intentions aren’t purely selfish. It’s not lost on him how important a Finn winning Rally Finland is for his country.
“Of course,” Rovanperä said when it was put to him that everyone wants to see a Finnish winner in Finland.
“That’s also what I want to give for the people, that’s quite clear.”
That’s his promise to the Finnish people, but what about his promise to his competition?
Worryingly for the rest, who may have been hoping the home event jitters would strike the runaway championship leader, Rovanperä is sounding more relaxed than ever.
“After all these wins this year I think we have nothing to prove,” he said.
“We just try to win it like every other rally, and if we cannot do it then we cannot do it.”
Talk about nonchalant – it’s almost as if he doesn’t care. But words can be deceiving. We all know that’s very much not the case.
