Jaspar Vaher stunned the rallying world last week by leading Royal Rally of Scandinavia, the second round of the European Rally Championship, on his very first outing on a fast gravel rally in Rally2 machinery – but his Toyota team has stressed that expectations for the 19-year-old need to be kept in check.
Toyota’s first non-Japanese WRC Challenge Program driver led for the first 12 stages of the ERC event despite minimal experience against drivers with plenty of success at both WRC and WRC2 level, outpacing Teemu Suninen, Mārtiņš Sesks and eventual winner Mikko Heikkilä until he crashed and fell out of contention.
Vaher only made his first competitive start aboard a Rally2 car four months ago and won Rallye Ciudad de Pozoblanco, a round of the Spanish Gravel championship, earlier this month. Royal Rally of Scandinavia was his first ERC start aboard four-wheel-drive machinery.
Given the sudden and immediate nature of his pace, it’s hard not to be immediately drawn to comparisons like Sébastien Loeb fighting for victory on the Sanremo Rally in 2001 – his first start in a factory Citroën in the WRC.
Juho Hänninen, one of Toyota’s WRC Challenge program instructors and Vaher’s mentor, admitted Vaher’s performance at Sweden’s ERC round was deserving of such comparison.
“I was thinking in exactly the same way, like that same kind of performance coming for the first time,” Hänninen told DirtFish. “For certain rallying people, OK, they knew the name, but still they didn’t know how he will do and what his level is. To come like that and being straight away in the top, there’s not so many examples [of drivers who have done that] in the past.”
Despite exceeding all reasonable expectations on his ERC debut, Hänninen has stressed the need for patience and that both Vaher and the team would need to focus on staying “humble” when it comes to the 19-year-old’s potential.
“We need to be patient,” said Hänninen. “It’s quite a sensitive time for him as he’s so young and now coming into the big lights, bigger rallies, and these expectations are coming high straightaway.
“Now it’s getting more difficult because everyone knows him and his speed, so now we need to stay humble with our feet on the ground for sure.”
Toyota’s record of signing young drivers has been incredibly successful in the modern era: Kalle Rovanperä moved to the top level with it in 2020 and became world champion two years later; then Oliver Solberg won on his Rally1 debut with the team and was leading the world championship standings earlier this season.
Is Vaher going to be the next Rovanperä for Toyota?
Hänninen conceded that comparisons to Vaher’s meteoric rise and fomer Toyota driver Rovanperä’s journey towards the top level cannot be avoided.
“I don’t want to give any extra pressure,” said Hänninen. “But for sure, what we saw now and what [Vaher] has done and how he’s doing it, for sure there’s some similarities in a way in that talent level [with Rovanperä], in how he’s able to be so fast straight away. You cannot deny it.”
Though confident in his raw pace, Vaher was surprised to be immediately faster than the ERC’s top contenders like Suninen and Sesks.
“This was the first real reference and comparison for how it really is,” said Vaher. “But for sure, no chance I would have expected or dreamed of leading the rally. I would have been really happy if we’d been consistently in the top five stage times throughout the weekend.
“I definitely didn’t expect any of this. So I’m a little bit shocked, yes.”
Taking advice from his mentor Hänninen, Vaher is trying to keep himself grounded: “I try to keep both feet on the ground because it’s still such early days in my career. I’m focused on myself and doing the hard work.”
Vaher will make his WRC debut in a Rally2 car in July, where Toyota will enter all four generations of its Challenge Program drivers into Vaher’s home event, Rally Estonia.
