Kalle Rovanperä has retired from fifth place on Safari Rally Kenya on the final day, meaning he will score no World Rally Championship points.
Rovanperä was once as close as 7.7 seconds to the lead of the rally, but two punctures on Saturday morning dropped him well over a minute behind Toyota team-mate Elfyn Evans.
He then broke his rear-left suspension against a rock on the afternoon loop, forcing him to limp through the stages and plummet down the order to fifth.
The Finn’s plan had been to recover as many points as he could from Super Sunday and the powerstage, but after Sunday’s opening test Rovanperä and co-driver Jonne Halttunen were seen working on their Toyota, replacing an alternator belt.
Despite their best efforts, the two-time world champions were forced to retire from the event after “running out of battery”.
Rovanperä and Halttunen left to contemplate a disappointing weekend in Kenya
It’s the latest blow in what has already been a difficult 2025 so far for Rovanperä, who struggled to adapt his driving style to the new Hankook rubber in Monte Carlo and Sweden and is therefore yet to claim a podium finish.
“It’s definitely not a good weekend,” Rovanperä told DirtFish. “It looked good if we would have been getting some points and staying close, but now for sure the gaps will be much bigger for us.”
Despite Evans leading, Toyota is also set for its weakest collective result at the Safari since the event returned to the WRC in 2021.
“I think the previous years have gone so well for us also that we used our luck there,” added two-time Safari winner Rovanperä, “and at some point you get all the bad stuff.”
