Moksi. It’s a village in central Finland. It’s a nice place – rural, but unremarkable with a population of 150 folk spread among the farms and a school building turned meeting hall. In one of the world’s most famous rallying families, it’s not a place held in the highest of reverence.
Rovanperäs father and son – Harri and Kalle – have both fallen foul of the place at a moment when they came closer than ever to writing their names in their nation’s rallying history.
Cast your mind back to 2002. The older of the two had powered his way past Peugeot team-mate Marcus Grönholm with a sensational run through Ouninpohja.
On the road through Moksi, however, he ran a touch wide and damaged the front-right corner. With the wheel back into the arch, he retired his 206 WRC at the side of the E63 moments later. Devastated.
He knew his biggest chance to win the rally he most wanted to win had gone.
Harri Rovanperä had taken the lead of Rally Finland 2002 when disaster struck
Twenty-two years on and the same road ended the same hopes of Kalle – but this time in more spectacular fashion. Rovanperä Jr was within touching distance of achieving his family’s first Finland win when Sunday went badly wrong.
Just as Harri overcame his disappointment to explain his demise in 2002, so did Kalle.
Having led from the third stage until the final corner of the penultimate test, the reigning world champion was still coming to terms with his fate with he saw DirtFish coming across the field just outside Moksi. His face expressionless, his only request was for the interview to be a short one.
Sunday was the most dejected I’ve ever seen him. He was on the floor. And rightly so. He and co-driver Jonne Halttunen deserved the win. They’d earned it across three days and some of the trickiest conditions in recent Secto Rally Finland memory.
This one had their name on it. Except it now reads Sébastien Ogier and Vincent Landais – deserving winners in their own right.
The two-time champ’s too young and too bright to be lost for words, but he chose them carefully. It was the pain etched into his face rather than the words which told the real story.
But the words are a sensible place to start.
“We had a really big loose stone on the road and fast corner,” he told DirtFish. “There was nothing this time I could actually do. When I saw the rock, no chance to avoid it. We hit it and it throws the whole car off the road, so we had a big crash because of that.
“We went straight out from the road. Yeah, quite an unbelievable feeling. Nothing we did wrong this time with Jonne.
“We did the perfect weekend until this. We had a huge lead to go for the win and this time just really bad luck with the stone.”
Rovanperä’s not one for deep emotion. He’s rallying’s ice man, cut from similar cloth to the other man of ice who shares the same initials. But this one hurt. A Myhinpää mishap 12 months ago was his fault: too fast into a right-hander, the car slid wide on the ensuing left, whacked a rock and rolled. The year before, he came off second best in a dogfight with Ott Tänak and before that he crashed into a pile of gravel after a sizey tank-slapper in Patajoki.
This was going to be his year. No doubt. Back-to-back wins in Poland and Latvia demonstrated those early season wobbles in Sweden and Portugal were history. Talking to him before the event, he looked different. A year ago, the pressure weighed on him, you could see that. Six years had come and gone since a Finnish winner and the nation’s needs sat heavy on 22-year-old shoulders.
There was none of that this time around. Of course he cared what the world thought, but he wasn’t giving it too much headspace – nobody wanted a Finland win as much as the two Finns sitting inside Toyota #69.
They were in good humor and up for a Friday fight with team-mate Elfyn Evans. When the Welshman dropped back with his driveshaft issue, there was genuine disappointment from KR. He wanted to play, he wanted to take on the man who’d done what he hadn’t been able to twice in the last three years.
Rovanperä had everything under control last weekend
But with Evans gone, Saturday and Ouninpohja was there to be enjoyed. Again, there was a family score to be settled. During his time, Harri had truly mastered the legend that is Ouninpohja. In 2001, he won the stage from Grönholm by 8.3 seconds, a year later he did ‘Bosse’ for 6.3.
“Dad was always good in this one,” Rovanperä told DirtFish. “It was a stage which clicked for him. He had good memories about this place and he talked about them. With the full stage back, I wanted to make sure that I could set a good time in there as well, we did that.”
Sunday morning and there was no stress. No reason to rush; the win was waiting. The win Finland has been waiting for since 2017 and Esapekka Lappi’s breakthrough Jyväskylä success. It’d been a long seven years, and that wait must painfully continue.
And the folk in and around Moksi will feel that pain as keenly as fans up and down the land. Standing among the villagers on Sunday afternoon, the atmosphere was almost funeral; children cried while others just stood and stared at the broken remains of the car which had looked unstoppable in its march towards history.
Just moments earlier, these same people had waved their flags, the blue and white of Finland and the red, white and black of Toyota: one in each hand. With one corner and one stage remaining, Kalle and Jonne were on their way.
The rock that ended Rovanperä's near-certain Rally Finland win
Square left, hard on the gas, pulling the gears out of the junction and with the aero squashing the Yaris into the road known locally as Varrasperäntie, there was a rock. That rock. In the blink of an eye, the Toyota was ballistic, bound for the trees. Rally over. Hearts broken across the village and around the country.
Sitting in the grass, staring at his phone, Rovanperä struggled to take it in. How could he? It made no sense. An inch or two either way and he’d have straddled the rock and talked of a close, close call. Instead, he sat and considered another year waiting for the one he wants the most.
Emerging from a helicopter, Harri had landed. The shoulder was what his son needed. Now they shared the story of the one that got away in the fields around Moksi.
Next time, Kalle. Next time.
