Kalle Rovanperä fears his struggle to adapt his driving style to the World Rally Championship’s new Hankook tires will continue at this week’s Rally Sweden.
The two-time world champion endured a tough Monte Carlo Rally in January, struggling for ultimate pace and comfort with the new-for-2025 rubber.
Arctic Lapland Rally gave Rovanperä extra time in the car and to adapt himself to Hankook’s snow tire where the Finn was able to learn “quite a lot”.
But he admitted he is still struggling to adapt his style of driving to the nuances of the Hankook tires.
“Me personally, [I’m] struggling a little bit with the tire – it doesn’t really suit my driving so well,” Rovanperä told DirtFish.
“So yeah, you probably will hear me complaining about it later on in the weekend. But of course I’m here to do a good result, so I try to change my driving and fix it quickly.”
Rovanperä is still adapting to rubber from new WRC supplier
The concern is Rovanperä had exactly the same problem on the Tarmac roads of Monte Carlo, so what must he do differently with his driving to get the most out of the tire?
“Well, you can’t be so aggressive on the steering, which was one of my things, especially on snow and gravel, where I was always quite fast in some places, I could do some things,” Rovanperä explained.
“But I would say overall [it’s] everywhere. The braking and how you enter the corners is quite different with this tire. So not really how I naturally drive, and that’s always difficult to change.”
Trying to fight natural instincts and change a driving style is not easily done when fighting for every tenth of a second on special stages.
“Yeah, that’s going to be the most difficult thing this weekend,” Rovanperä admitted.
“You shouldn’t need to think about your driving, ever. It just comes how it is, and now I can feel that I need to think some things during driving, which is never good, but that’s how it is and we try our best.”
Finnish fans will hope quickly finds his comfort zone
Toyota team principal Jari-Matti Latvala is confident however that Rovanperä shouldn’t struggle in Sweden to the extent he did in Monte.
“What I’ve learned over the years is that Kalle is a little bit ‘allergic’ to understeer,” Latvala told DirtFish.
“And if the car is understeering, he can’t get to the comfort zone and then he is not able to attack. And I think this was the case in Monte, just he didn’t find the feeling because he felt the car is more understeering.
“But I think here, now with these snow tires on the ice condition, I think you can drive a bit more like a drifting style, which normally should suit Kalle. So I’m confident that here we can see him being very fast.”
Rovanperä will start the opening leg third on the road. He previously won Rally Sweden in 2022 when the rally first moved north to Umeå.
