The bubble burst. At five o’clock on Friday afternoon, the atmosphere in the Rally Finland service park changed. The Finns were a little bit finished.
One of the highlights of the Paviljonki area is the massive TV screen which adorns a wall of the main building. Throughout Friday morning, that wall had been beaming out stage win after stage win for Kalle Rovanperä. The Jyväskylä-born local hero.
Across all four corners of the service park, the 22-year-old world champion’s utter class and ruthless efficiency was visible.
Which meant when he roofed his Toyota on the second run through Myhinpää the world – and his people – were all watching.
The shift was palpable. Seeing slack-jawed parents staring at the screen, children lowered their blue and white flags. This wasn’t the way the story ended.
It’s always the way with Rally Finland. Such is the fervour, the feeling, the hope and the hero-worship, if a Finn’s not on for the win, things aren’t too tickety-boo. Friday evening bore that out as leaden skies delivered their drizzle, reflecting a somber mood some way south of the clouds.
It didn’t help that Esapekka Lappi had tipped his Hyundai into the trees on the morning’s final stage. Finnish rally fans are Finnish rally fans first and rally fans second. I’ve seen this down the years – when Mikko Hirvonen bounced off a tree in Lankamaa in 2011, that Thursday evening was miserable. But there was still appreciation for Sébastien Loeb’s win.
It was the same for Elfyn Evans and Scott Martin. There was huge admiration for Kalle’s team-mates and the atmosphere at the finish of the powerstage in Himos offered an ample demonstration of Finnish appreciation.
Predictably, Evans couldn’t really see what all the fuss was about. In typically understated Elfyn fashion, he’d done his job: he’s employed to win rallies, he’d won a rally. Fortunately, there were enough folk around him to remind him that Sunday was a very, very great day to be Elfyn Evans.
To remind him that, in 72 years, he’s only the second person not from those parts to have won Finland twice. The other? Sébastien Loeb. To remind him that, across Saturday and Sunday, his performance was as self-assured and solid as it has been feisty and flat-out on Friday.
In short, he drove it like a local. No wonder the Finns approved.
Would he have won if Rovanperä had kept it on the road? Who cares? Pointless question. But let’s humor the point: quite possibly, yes. He was only 5.7 seconds off the lead when Rovanperä rolled.
Evans’ maturity and his ability to deal with the stress of leading a team in front of the big boss – Akio Toyoda – were among the standouts from the week. Whatever Thierry Neuville had got, Evans had more. Is masterclass overplaying it? I don’t think so.
We’ve always known Evans has massive fast rally pace. He dominated an autumnal Finland two years ago and did the same at a shortened, sodden Sweden two-and-a-bit years ago. But this was different.
Evans has been forced to go through a process of reinvention to win this one. He’s had to give something of himself and his natural style of driving to get the best out of a car which didn’t suit him in the way the previous Toyota did. To do that in Finland is a proper achievement.
Much as I love Estonia and the roads around Tartu, is it possible Finland’s nearest neighbor has dented the annual impact of the Jyväskylän summer of speed? Estonia is fast, challenging and amazing – it must be, Kalle Rovanperä prefers the roads to the south of the Gulf of Finland.
I was slightly taken aback by the world champ’s thinking last month. Talking to somebody far wiser than I, it was pointed out that KR had grown up (at least competitively) on the similar roads of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Has that affected his thinking on the world’s best roads? Possibly.
Want to take Evans on next year? Let’s do it. Seriously. Name me a sport where you can do that against the best of the best
Driving roads like Myhinpää, Ouninpohja and Lankamaa and then watching the world’s best set about them is a truly humbling experience. The speed defies belief. The spectacle nonsensical. The bravery beyond anything most mortals could even conceive.
The Belgian Grand Prix split Estonia and Finland and watching a modern Formula 1 car through Pouhon or Eau Rouge is, without question, awesome. But it pales when it’s stacked up against the shocking visual impact of a Rally1 car simultaneously on the rev limiter and lock stops… brushing the trees before going ballistic.
Formula 1’s speed is clinically precise on tailormade tracks.
Rallying’s speed comes at all angles on switchback, school run roads.
The true glory of motorsport’s muddier side is the relevance of its cars and a connection to everyday life via those roads. It’s aspirational and otherworldly, but still it talks to people who can stand and watch in wonder.
Above all of that is its accessibility. Want to take Evans on next year? Let’s do it. Seriously. Granted, we’re not going to find the budget to fund a Rally1 car, but there’s a national event which runs down some of the same stages a matter of minutes after our heroes have completed. Take a Toyota Starlet, a BMW whatever or even a big Volvo and fire it into Laukaa – see how you stack up.
Name me a sport where you can do that against the best of the best.
Right, I’ve digressed enormously. Apologies.
Back to Elfyn dialling a GR Yaris Rally1 into Finland. He found something in Estonia. Disappointingly, he didn’t want to share the precise details with DirtFish, talking instead in broad terms of putting pieces of the jigsaw together. Exactly what it was doesn’t matter. Point is, he made it stick in the face of the season’s most extreme speed.
I’ve watched Elfyn and Scotty through their entire careers and seeing them achieve what they achieved on Sunday afternoon was nothing short of brilliant. They’re two of the nicest guys in rallying and to see them celebrate with their lovely families offered a big and very bright ray of sunshine through skies darkened since that Thursday in April.
Plenty spent Sunday night trying to convince Evans of the magnificence of his achievement. Nobody could have done it quite like Breeny.
