Jonne Halttunen remembers the moment well. The day it all changed – when he went from an aspiring professional rally co-driver to the real deal. A day that would set him off on a journey to becoming World Rally champion.
His phone pinged. Kalle Rovanperä, showing his age – or rather lack thereof – hadn’t called. Instead, a quick message on a smartphone app is where it all began.
“I remember, on Facebook Messenger or something like this, in the end he asked me to co-drive him in one secret Pirelli test in early 2017 in the winter,” Halttunen recounts to DirtFish.
“I think he asked me on Facebook Messenger, can you come?
“I said, maybe. When?
“Tomorrow!
“OK, I can do it.
“That was the first time he texted me!”
And off Halttunen went to forge the very beginnings of a partnership that would clinch a world title. Not that it would have looked that way to the outside world in the beginning, once they’d properly partnered up later that year.
“I remember also the first time he came to my place, we were doing our first rallies, and he came with this small moped car, something where the max speed is 15kph,” Halttunen laughs.
“It was funny that, OK, I have to do the rallies with this guy!”
A kid on a glorified moped is not many peoples’ idea of a life-changing moment. But Halttunen had been hoping the call – or, rather, text – would eventually come.
Halttunen hadn’t started out in rallying harboring ambitions to become a world champion: “Almost the first 10 years being a part of this sport, it was just a pure hobby,” he says. But venturing off to all corners of Europe with Ville Silvasti and his bright yellow Porsche 911 Carrera RS changed his perspective.
“It was maybe 2016 when people started to say, have you thought about doing this professionally? You’re quite good at it.
This is where Rovanperä came in. He had the potential to solve the biggest problem that would stop Halttunen from turning pro.
“OK, it would be nice, but we don’t have any drivers to be with. To be a good co-driver, you need a good driver also,” he points out.
“At that point, Kalle was coming; OK, he was there, but coming to the higher levels. Then many people said to me, maybe you should contact Kalle, I think you would be a good pair.
“I think I saw Kalle for the first time when he was 12 or 13 years old. He was doing tests with us, while I was doing one with some other guy. This was the first time I saw him in rallying and I thought ‘OK, this guy is quite good’.
“Then we were racing against him in the Finnish championship in a Škoda Fabia R5. Actually, me and my mate Teemu Asunmaa, we were leading the rally after seven stages, Kalle was second, and we were discussing it; ‘OK, it would be nice to beat Kalle because he’s quite good’.”
We all know where this story is headed. Vaakuna Rally 2017 was only going to have one outcome.
“But in the end, Kalle won.”
While there’s a 15-year age gap between Halttunen and Rovanperä, it’s nothing like another junior-senior partnership between Finns that delivered world titles – namely Tommi Mäkinen and Seppo Harjanne. In Harjanne’s case, he’d already been world champion with Timo Salonen, then bestowed his experience upon Mäkinen has he waded through the tricky waters of part-time WRC programs before his big break with Mitsubishi came.
Halttunen was no grizzled sensei. Even before the pair had graced the WRC stage in the junior categories, he knew the scale of opportunity presented to him was huge. And given how much time and monetary investment father Harri Rovanperä had poured into Kalle’s career, Halttunen felt the pressure to deliver.
“I would lie if I didn’t say I felt some pressure, for sure,” admits Halttunen.
“The pressure at first was quite big. Also, in that point of view, I didn’t know if I was good enough. You don’t know because you haven’t been there before, so you have to also prove to yourself that you are worthy of the job.
“Harri was at that time, before we went to Škoda, was quite highly involved with Kalle’s career because he had to fix all the races that he did. He was all the time there as a mechanic, as a dad, doing a brilliant job. I think he was doing the best that anybody could.
“But when we went to Škoda, it was a real transition from being a driver with your dad, then having to go and give Kalle the chance to grow up as an independent human being, an adult. So we started doing that together.
“But for sure, in the first two years, the first events and first sixth months, everyone was spectating Kalle, looking that, OK, he’ll be a good guy. And also they’re looking at me, let’s see if I make some mistakes, everyone will point the finger that OK, he did that mistake. So I tried to be as good as possible.”
Those mistakes didn’t come. A little over five years from their first event together on South Estonia Rally, the pair would clinch the biggest prize in rallying together. How did they gel so well together?
“He’s just overall really precise on all the co-driving things,” says Rovanperä. “He’s always quite precise on how he wants to do his own things, even if it doesn’t really affect anyone else so much.
“You can see it quite clearly when you are doing work with him, he’s always very clear in what he wants to do and why. He always does the same things and is really sharp on those. And that’s always really important, especially on co-drivers, so then you don’t make mistakes. Then you stay focused on what you are doing.
“For us, it’s important that he’s also a bit similar to me; we can enjoy things, have fun in the car. We are not really fighting about anything; we usually have the same opinions.
“And it’s also quite important that Jonne has quite good ideas himself. He also always is ready to push for the next level, to push things which are maybe not the most important or first in the line. He always remembers to push those things and try to make everything a bit better.”
It’s that level of trust – where Rovanperä will happily accept Halttunen pointing out mistakes in their pacenotes and correcting them himself, rather than letting the driver be fully responsible for writing the notes, that’s made a difference in Halttunen’s eyes.
“I know maybe some drivers don’t even like it. Many drivers, with pacenotes, they take full responsibility, 100% themselves. But me and Kalle, we have always doing it jointly. Because for me, if you have two pairs of eyes and a pair of brains, you can always see things.
“Maybe sometimes drivers see co-drivers as, they’re working for me, he has to just make the pacenotes and that’s it. For us [two]…everything related to driving is his job. But all the rest, it’s something that two people can have better results than just one person themselves.”
Results don’t get much better than becoming world champion. It’s been over a week now that Halttunen’s been able to call himself that. But it doesn’t seem to have fully registered just yet. After all, he’s just spent three weeks on the road. The weekend after Rally New Zealand was his first chance to go home and relax.
“To be honest, I haven’t had so much time, just been enjoying that time off,” he says.
“For sure it feels nice and amazing but maybe still feeling like a bit of a dream or something.”
