The World Rally Championship reaches one of its most anticipated events this week, with the 73rd edition of Secto Rally Finland.
The previous two rounds in Poland and Latvia were fast, but there remains something uniquely special about Finland. Experience, bravery and confidence in the car underneath you are crucial ingredients to success on the high-speed gravel roads around Jyväskylä.
Can Kalle Rovanperä break his home-event hoodoo and secure a third consecutive WRC rally win, or will his championship-challenging team-mate Elfyn Evans repeat his success from last year? Perhaps Ott Tänak can reproduce his 2022 heroics to gain the upper hand in the title race?
Here’s our form guide on the state of play as we head for the Finnish forests:
#11 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: 8th-4th-41st
Best Finland result: 2nd (2013 & 2023)
Road-sweeping proved to be even more of a headache than usual for championship leader Thierry Neuville in Latvia. He even struggled to limit the damage on Super Sunday – his six-point Sunday return being Neuville’s second worst of the season.
But given those difficulties, Neuville could still be reasonably satisfied with scoring nine points overall. And with two of the three consecutive fast rallies on the loose – a traditional weakness of both Neuville and his Hyundai team – done and dusted, he still leads the standings.
If he’s still in that position in a week’s time, he can look back on a job well done. But it will be tough. Road-sweeping isn’t quite as big a factor in Finland but opening the road will still be a disadvantage in the expected dry conditions.
Second last year was better than most predicted, and Neuville would surely snap your hand off if offered the same result in 2024.
#8 Ott Tänak/Martin Järveoja (Hyundai i20 N Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: 3rd-40th-1st
Best Finland result: 1st (2018, 2019 & 2022)
On recent events, Ott Tänak has been showing the kind of form that suggests he’s getting back to his 2019 best. Three podium finishes in four events may have been four in a row were it not for a brave deer in Poland.
Crucially, Tänak has also done a fine job of maximizing his scoring under the new points system. He has bagged at least 10 out of 12 Sunday points on the past six events, regardless of how well his Friday/Saturday has gone. Now only eight behind team-mate Neuville in the standings, the momentum is with Tänak.
No-one in the Rally1 field has a better record in Finland than Tänak either, whose three wins were topped by that unforgettable drive in 2022 when he seemingly spent the entire event on the absolutely limit.
Now is the Estonian’s chance to stamp his authority on the 2024 season.
#33 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR Yaris Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: 5th-2nd-4th
Best Finland result: 1st (2021 & 2023)
Falling to third in the standings, Elfyn Evans’s championship challenge is danger of slipping away. Over a run of four consecutive gravel events, Evans has been outscored by both Hyundai title contenders, and even his two world-champion team-mates who have only contested three each.
Yet to win this year, and with only one podium finish in the past four events, it’s fair to say that Evans is not showing championship-winning form. Yes, he’s had to contend with difficult road positions and some untimely misfortune, but Evans needs a win – or at least a very big points haul – this week.
And yet if there’s anywhere Evans can turn his season around, Finland could be the place as he has won two of the past three editions of the event. A slightly better road position than Neuville and Tänak can only help, but whether he can hold off his own team-mates is another question.
A fine run on last weekend’s HYAcenter warm-up event, when he won every stage (albeit as the only Rally1 car in the field), should have set him up nicely, and if he can find that elusive feeling from the off, expect a victory challenge.
#17 Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR Yaris Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: 2nd-2nd-1st
Best Finland result: 1st (2013)
With Sébastien Ogier and Kalle Rovanperä ostensibly ‘sharing’ Toyota’s third car this year, not many would have expected the eight-time world champion to be starting Secto Rally Finland, an event he hasn’t contested since stepping back from full-time competition.
But Toyota always maintained there could be rallies that both its superstars contested, and here they both are – for the third time in five events – as the team seeks to bolster its manufacturers’ championship challenge.
Finland was never a favorite of Ogier’s, but that didn’t stop him conquering it in 2013. And with the form he is in – two wins and four second places from his past six starts – another victory isn’t out of the question.
But a podium finish and some big points is perhaps a more likely outcome for the wily veteran.
#16 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Ford Puma Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: 4th-3rd-15th
Best Finland result: 7th (2021)
Such has been the consistent strength of Adrien Fourmaux’s 2024 season that it is no longer a surprise for him to feature as a podium contender on most events.
His run to fourth in Latvia was more steady than spectacular, and not without its problems. But it was another example of his increased maturity, even though there were moments when Fourmaux appeared frustrated to be overshadowed by his rookie team-mate Mārtiņš Sesks’ incredible showing.
Fourmaux appears to thrive in his role of being M-Sport’s top dog so should feel more comfortable in Finland.
It is an event where his experience is limited, especially at the top level, and his only Rally1 start did not go well in 2022. But he was happy with his run to seventh the previous year, and he impressed en route to second in WRC2 last year. A podium finish may be optimistic, but expect Fourmaux to be in the hunt.
#69 Kalle Rovanperä/Jonne Halttunen (Toyota GR Yaris Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: 1st-1st-31st
Best Finland result: 2nd (2022)
Kalle Rovanperä comes to his home event on the back of successive wins in Poland and Latvia. Ostensibly, they were similar rallies, but the reigning world champion’s preparation for them was very different after his last-minute call-up to Poland.
Rovanperä took it all in his stride and looked back to his best form after dropping the ball in two of his three previous 2024 starts. Now his record this season stands at three wins and two crashes.
His past record in Finland suggests he could add to one or other of those tallies this week too. For despite his majesty over his two title-winning campaigns, Rovanperä has yet to master Secto Rally Finland. He crashed on his first top-level start here in 2021, was beaten into second by Tänak’s swashbuckling 2022 performance, then crashed from the lead last year.
Rovanperä will be very keen to put that right and with the form he is on, allied to an ideal road position, it would take a brave person to bet against him.
#18 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR Yaris Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: 6th-8th-35th
Best Finland result: 3rd (2023)
What had been something of a rollercoaster ride for Takamato Katsuta this year has become stuck in a trough in recent events. Toyota’s second full-time driver, who the team was expecting to be a consistent scorer, has finished no better than sixth in the past four rallies.
And in truth, he hasn’t looked close to troubling the podium positions in a very disappointing run. We know Katsuta’s confidence can quite easily be knocked, and his crash from third in Portugal was an undoubted blow.
Poland was perhaps the nadir, and there were clear signs of improvement in Latvia, but Katsuta still seems unable to balance pace with consistency.
Finland, his adopted second home, is one of the Japanese driver’s favorite events, and he impressed en route to third last year. A repeat may be tough, but with Ogier and Rovanperä both scoring manufacturers’ points, the pressure is less. A strong run in the top six, with a pace close to that of the podium finishers, would be a welcome step in the right direction.
#4 Esapekka Lappi/Janne Ferm (Hyundai i20 N Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: DNF-12th-1st
Best Finland result: 1st (2017)
There’s no denying that Rally Latvia was very disappointing for Esapekka Lappi. He was expected by many to be in podium contention but ran at the lower end of the top 10 for the entire event before his Hyundai was retired after completing the final stage with a broken engine.
A combination of setup woe and a lack of seat time since the Safari Rally in March were offered as explanations, with the team suggesting it only ever expected Latvia to serve as a warm-up for Finland.
So now Lappi must make Secto Rally Finland count. His win on the event in 2017 was a break-out moment, but it took until Sweden this year for him to add another WRC success. He has scored two further podiums in Finland, plus a strong fourth in a privateer Toyota in 2021, which effectively earned his return to the top table. But there have also been a couple of crashes, including on the first day last year.
It’s hard to know which Lappi will turn up this weekend. But on his home event, with the rust now hopefully blown off, and a very good road position, he really should be in the thick of the battle.
#13 Grégoire Munster/Louis Louka (Ford Puma Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: 9th-7th-5th
Best Finland result: 8th (2019, WRC2)
Three top-10 finishes in a row for Grégoire Munster mean that he has been racking up the mileage – and therefore experience – that this campaign was all about. He has been progressing, albeit he remains some way from challenging the frontrunners.
That progress will not translate into a podium challenge in Finland. Nor, assuming limited attrition, even a top-six finish in all likelihood.
Finland is another event that Munster does not have much experience of. He has only started the rally twice, both times in second-tier machinery. He crashed out on the first leg of his debut in 2019 but came back under super-rally rules to be classified eighth in WRC2. Last year, he completed the full route and finished ninth in WRC2.
As such, the target can only be to complete the route once more and chip away at the deficit to team-mate Fourmaux.
#5 Sami Pajari/Enni Mälkönen (Toyota GR Yaris Rally1)
Last 3 WRC results: 3rd-1st-1st (WRC2)
Best Finland result: 1st (2023, WRC2)
There is a lot of excitement surrounding 22-year-old Rally1 debutant Sami Pajari, who pilots a fifth Toyota on this event as he takes a break from his WRC2 title challenge.
That can only have been heightened by the performance of M-Sport’s Mārtiņš Sesks on his first two Rally1 outings in Poland and Latvia. But Toyota team principal Jari-Matti Latvala has sensibly moved to dampen expectation and reiterate that Pajari is here only for experience.
Pajari is clearly a star of the future, and won in WRC2 here last year, but the leap from Rally2 to Rally1 is massive, even if Sesks (who benefited from an interim, hybrid-less, step, let’s not forget) made it look otherwise.
The last thing Pajari needs is to throw his GR Yaris into the trees on the opening day and potentially join the long list of aspiring talent who failed on their big opportunity. A sensible drive, gradually increasing his pace over the weekend, should be on the cards – and that doesn’t rule out an eye-catching result.
