How was Rovanperä beaten by a Rally2 car at Arctic Rally?

Young Finn Tuukka Kauppinen drove a sublime rally but a lot can't be read into him beating Rovanperä's Toyota Rally1

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Did anybody else notice an elephant slide into the room on Saturday night? Eighteen-year-old Tuukka Kauppinen beating Kalle Rovanperä by 11 seconds on the Arctic Lapland Rally… how did that happen?

Firstly, Kauppinen drove a faultless event in his Toyota GR Yaris Rally2. He didn’t put a wheel out of place and was on the money throughout. He was only out of the top-three stage times twice across the two days and 13 tests.

Secondly, two millimeters. That’s the thickness of a nickel. Or a guitar pick. Or the sim card in your phone. That’s where the real difference sat in Rovaniemi. When it comes to winter rallying, brakes and brake horsepower are all amazing, but the real performance comes from stud length.

The Finnish Rally Championship regulations allow studs of up to nine-mil, which is what Kauppinen and co. were running. Rovanperä was on the World Rally Championship-specification Hankook, complete with a seven-mil protrusion.

Yes, the two-time world champion’s GR Yaris Rally1 had 100 more horses and a stack more downward shove from the aero in the high-speed sections, but the simple physics of more metal grabbing the ice below told its own story.

And, this being a glorified pre-event Sweden for Rovanperä, there were changes aplenty for the older of the two young Finns.

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18-year-old Kauppinen drove a mega rally to dominate the Rally2 field and even win overall

Sounds like we’re making excuses for the man who finished second, we’re not. Kauppinen was on fire and absolutely deserved his success – a better measure would probably be the way he showed the best of the Rally2 rest (including a third-placed Esapekka Lappi) the way home.

For Rovanperä, it was a job similarly well done from his side.

“It was really important for us to come here with the new tire from Hankook,” he said. “We came to get a bit more feeling and more kilometers on snow and try to find the best setup and best way for us to go and, yeah, it was a good weekend. Like every year, this was a super-cool event.”

Pushed harder on the Hankook on snow, Rovanperä added: “There is quite a lot of work to do with the car and everything – the tire is quite different than what we have seen previously, so yeah, it was good to be here. We still have one test day next week and we really need to focus there to do a good job.”

From Kalle’s perspective, there’s nothing to see here: he went north, drove his car, the engineers did their sums, downloaded their data and Umeå will tell the true story next week.

Six places down from Rovanperä was another Toyota: older, but clothed in the same black, red and white livery. Jari-Matti Latvala gave his new-old Celica Turbo 4WD its debut and was battling for a top-six spot until the car lapsed onto three cylinders for much of the final stage.

He couldn’t hide his smile.

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Latvala was also out in the Arctic Circle, steering his Celica to a top-10 finish

“One of the nice things with the old Celica,” he said, “is actually to see when you’re pushing it to the limits, how close you can get to the modern cars. This is one of the elements which I enjoy.”

Swapping caps from driver to team principal, Latvala was pleased with what he’d seen from Rovanperä.

“I was talking a lot with Kalle during the rally,” he said. “On Friday, he was ahead of me and then he was driving behind me on Saturday – so we had time to discuss things and this is the best time to talk with your driver about things with the car and how we can improve for the future. This was really useful.”

Was he surprised at the result?

“I think overall, what you look [at] here when you’re in the Finnish championship, people are running with the different kind of tires on a national level, the world level you are different tire.

“So here you can see the variations with the times coming because you can run longer studs than what you can do in a World Rally Championship [event]. But, at least, you get an idea of which conditions the new tire is working the best [in], which conditions you have to be a little bit more cautious and then you learn the behaviour of the tire.

“I think then you are more ready, it’s one most important thing for Kalle to know where he can push in Sweden.”

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