Heikki Kovalainen had watched the best in the business hustle Group B cars as a young kid in Finland. He’d become a Formula 1 driver and gotten the chance to sample some WRC machinery – a Peugeot 307 WRC at the Race of Champions and a Citroën C4 WRC at a seat-swap press event at Paul Ricard many years ago – but earlier this month, he finally got to belt up and do the real thing. A full-fat, WRC+ spec Citroën C3 WRC awaited.
Better still, Kovalainen had someone who knew the car first-hand from its world championship days. Janne Ferm announced his retirement from the WRC at the finish of Rally Chile after 90 events sat alongside Esapekka Lappi – then immediately went off to San Marino to navigate the one-time F1 race winner for RallyLegend.
But the biggest surprise was that Kovalainen was on the startline at all, revving up the C3 WRC and waiting impatiently to unleash all 380bhp, six months after having open-heart surgery.
“It’s been pretty incredible how the recovery has been,” Kovalainen tells DirtFish. “I mean, better than I was ever hoping for when we went for the operation. We knew that it can take a long time or it can take a shorter time, but it has all gone really well, I think.
Fit, healthy and raring to unleash Citroën C3 WRC: Kovalainen at RallyLegend
“I just have to remind myself every now and then, because it could be a totally different story. And I’m just grateful that I’m still rallying at this level and feeling well. It’s amazing what medical science can do.”
RallyLegend is an exhibition event. It’s timed, yes, but winning isn’t necessarily the pure spirit of the event. It’s generally seen as an opportunity to sacrifice speed for the spectacular; if you’re not on the precipice of spinning out from how hard you’ve thrown the car sideways into corners, maybe this isn’t the rally to be at.
It’s not the case for everyone, though. For Adrien Fourmaux aboard a Ford Puma Rally1, it acted as a shakedown for Central European Rally. For Kovalainen, what was originally meant to be a bit of fun started to turn more serious once he’d belted himself into the bucket seat of his borrowed C3 WRC.
“The plan was not to take it seriously,” Kovalainen explains. “Considering what’s been going on this year, I always try to remind myself now not to take it too seriously and just enjoy that you can do the rallying. But like Janne was saying to me, it’s obvious to see that once you jump into the car and put the helmet on the mindset seems to change a little bit and it becomes a bit more serious than it perhaps should be.”
Sideways is serious in front of RallyLegend's huge crowds
A slow start to the event, caused by a driveshaft failure, rapidly increased in pace. He started it over two seconds per kilometer off Fourmaux’s pace – by the end that gap had more than halved. He ran out of stages to catch last year’s winner Luca Pedersoli’s i20 Coupe WRC – but he’d been fastest of the WRC+ cars since the halfway point of the rally. Ferm’s feedback was predictable: Kovalainen had gotten the hang of the low-speed driving rapidly; what required further work was trusting that the aerodynamics would allow faster cornering at higher speeds.
“It seems like I can’t really help avoiding it,” says Kovalainen. “I mean, I really enjoyed being in the car. So once you’re there and you get excited, you just want to try to go faster. And yeah, I was definitely looking at the stage times and seeing if there are any improvements coming. So I guess it’s somewhere still in the back of my head that’s sort of waiting.”
Kovalainen’s done a fair bit of rallying now. He started in a two-wheel drive Toyota GR86, moved up to a Škoda Fabia R5 and has now shifted to a GR Yaris Rally2 in the Japanese championship. He won last week’s Highland Rally, but due to the events he missed earlier in the year he won’t be able to retain the championship title he won last season.
Kovalainen is more at home on Tarmac stages like on Japan's Highland Rally, which he won in Team Aicello's Toyota GR Yaris Rally2
Rallying was meant to be his third career, of sorts. Not a full-time one but still his main pursuit. But getting behind the wheel of a proper top-level machine, with a current WRC star to benchmark himself against, offers a new perspective. Is there a desire to push towards something bigger?
“I’m pretty sure that the plans for the future are not going to change much because of this,” says Kovalainen. “But it was certainly very exciting driving that kind of car. It gives you a taste like, ah, should I try to do a bit more of this?
“But at the same time, you know what the reality is and also with where I’m at in my life at the moment, doing a full-on world championship effort wouldn’t sit well with me. It wouldn’t be practical, it probably wouldn’t make sense.
“RallyLegend also has relatively short stages, so you get to know them quite quickly and memorize a lot of them. If you went to do a proper rally with longer stages, then you need to drive from the pacenotes and then it would get a whole lot harder. I still know where I’m standing against the big boys, as it were, so I’m not getting carried away. But for a short period of time it was fun to be able to push that kind of car and compare to some really good guys. Obviously, Fourmaux is a great benchmark there, so it was great to compare to him.”
Kovalainen's C3 WRC was classified third on RallyLegend
Kovalainen is, broadly speaking, back to where he was 12 months ago. Fit and healthy again, mostly recovered from his heart surgery, he can try to take the next step forward in his rallying ambitions.
Last year he’d taken on most of the Finnish championship season while also clinching the Japanese championship, delivering a balance of gravel and asphalt experience. But given his circuit racing prowess, he’s looking towards more events on the black stuff in future.
“We are looking at some events for next year, some rallies perhaps in Europe, some Tarmac rallies,” Kovalainen says. “Obviously Tarmac is much easier for me than gravel. And there is a good chance that I will continue in Japan. I’ve enjoyed the Japanese championship with Aicello. I think there’s a possibility that we’ll continue here. So overall, there might be a few more events than in the last couple of years, perhaps. It’s not fully decided yet.”
This could have been Kovalainen’s calling – his early years watching Kankkunen and Salonen in Group B cars indoctrinated him sufficiently. Had karting not come along and led to Formula 1, maybe this would be the end of his rallying career, rather than the start.
He’s 43 years old and just suffered a health scare. But that’s not going to pose any sort of obstacle. Being in the orbit of the world’s best-ever rally drivers has taught him he’s got plenty of time yet to get better.
“I’ve spoken to a few of the past champions and quite often those guys have said that perhaps they could have continued their career for years longer. While I feel fit and well and I still have the passion for it, I think there’s no reason not to continue.
“I know that I won’t be another Kalle Rovanperä or Sébastien Ogier, but I’m sure I can improve and get better. And that’s also an important part of the why to keep doing it. The motivation and the passion needs to be there. If I was just doing it for other reasons, I think it wouldn’t be right. But I definitely still have a passion that drives me.”
