Kalle Rovanperä has pulled off a remarkable victory on Rally Poland, round seven of the World Rally Championship, defeating Toyota team-mate Elfyn Evans by 28.3s despite only entering the rally five days earlier as a last-minute stand-in.
Eight-time world champion Sébastien Ogier had been set to lead to the line for Toyota in Poland, coming off the back of two wins and a second place in the past three events.
Toyota’s plans were put in jeopardy when Ogier and co-driver Vincent Landais were involved in an accident with another car during recce of the Gołdap stage on Tuesday, with both transported to hospital along with the occupants of the other vehicle. All were released from hospital without serious injury.
Ogier and Landais were withdrawn from the rally, with Rovanperä and Jonne Halttunen flying over from Finland to take their place in Toyota’s lineup – leaving the pair unprepared for the rally ahead.
That lack of preparation had a noticeable effect: Rovanperä was much faster on second passes of stages, with his stage victory lockout on Saturday afternoon the key to building a lead he’d keep until the end of the rally.
He couldn’t match Ott Tänak’s searing pace on the final day and fell 4.5s short of topping the Sunday standings.
“It’s quite an amazing week. Not so normal,” said Rovanperä at the finish. “I have to say, we have been working quite hard, I’m really feeling tired now.
“I think the best thing is we came here and was not a bad idea to come. For sure we helped the team a lot, we took some really good points for the teams’ championship, so we didn’t waste our time.”
Tänak’s rally was compromised on Friday morning when he hit a deer on stage two, the animal jumping directly in front of his car in a flat-out, top gear straight and forcing him to retire on the spot. Come Sunday the Hyundai driver was in imperious form despite sweeping the stages as first car on the road, topping the Sunday classification and finishing runner-up on the power stage to take 11 out of a possible 12 points on the final day.
Andreas Mikkelsen had been Rovanperä’s nearest rival for victory during most of the event, having initially led the way on Friday before being caught up by the reigning world champion on Saturday.
Any hopes of victory were extinguished when Mikkelsen pushed a tire off the rim on Sunday’s first stage, which then fell apart and damaged both the bodywork and a radiator on his hybrid unit’s cooling system.
He then cruised to the finish line to preserve the 15 points he’d scored on Saturday, plummeting from second to sixth overall by the finish.
Mikkelsen’s woe promoted Elfyn Evans to second place on the final day, though his real battle was to pick up as many Sunday points as possible – which went awry on the powerstage when he picked up a slow puncture.
“There was a rock on the line on entry to a corner, it was too late by the time I saw it, so not a lot I can do,” explained Evans at the finish line.
Both Mikkelsen and Evans sustained tire dramas on Sunday, with varying degrees of consequence
That compromised Evans’ attempts to claw back points in the title race from Thierry Neuville; he managed to hold fourth place in the Sunday order by 0.3s from the championship leader but scored nothing in the powerstage, which Neuville won.
That late drama meant Evans gains only four points over Neuville in the title race, the gap between them shrinking to 15 points. Tänak is a further six points behind Evans and third in the championship standings.
Adrien Fourmaux secured the final place on the podium and also third in the Sunday running, his third visit to the podium in 2024 after his back-to-back rostrum finishes in Sweden and Kenya.
Mārtiņš Sesks secured a remarkable fifth place on his Rally1 debut in a non-hybrid Ford Puma, regaining the position he’d lost to a charging Neuville when Mikkelsen hit strife on Sunday morning. The European Rally Championship title contender had started off very strongly with second-fastest time on stage two, only 0.3s off the pace, then carefully managed his pace thereafter.
Sesks will step up to a full-fat Puma Rally1 with hybrid fitted at his home WRC round in Latvia next month
M-Sport’s second points-nominated driver Grégoire Munster ran out of stages to catch the ailing Mikkelsen in the final classification; his main aim had been to put in a confidence-building overall result rather than chase Sunday points. A second-fastest stage time on Olecko, his best performance to date, was the highlight on his way to seventh place.
A difficult weekend for Takamoto Katsuta was epitomized by his run on the powerstage. Having taken a somewhat careful approach to preserve his tires for the power stage he slid wide and hit a bank, impeding his progress.
The one upside was he gained extra points on the Mikołajki test, passing Sesks in the Sunday order to gain a place and an extra point, plus clinching a bonus point for fifth place on the powerstage.
Sami Pajari wrapped up victory in the WRC2 class he’d led since the very start, his second in a row after leading the way in Sardinia.
But behind him the podium fight ramped up massively, as punctures began to dictate the outcome of which silverware went where.
Robert Virves initially reclaimed the second placed he’d lost from Oliver Solberg at the end of Saturday’s action, then suffered a puncture on the penultimate stage – as did Pierre-Louis Loubet.
Josh McErlean was in the running for a podium finish until he clattered a bale placed in front of a tree
Josh McErlean had crashed out on Sunday’s first stage, clipping a bale that ripped the right-rear wheel of his Škoda Fabia RS Rally2 clean off and sent him over the flying finish backwards, bringing Nikolay Gryazin and Georg Linnamäe back into the equation.
Gryazin had looked set to take third position after Virves and Loubet’s troubles on Gmina Mrągowo but suffered a puncture of his own on the powerstage, hitting multiple bales as he desperately pushed to stem the subsequent time loss.
It wasn’t enough for the Citroën driver – at first it seemed Linnamäe would benefit and take the final place on the podium, only for Virves to then come through and pip him to the place by 0.6s.
Loubet was the last contender to the finish line but couldn’t do enough to make the podium, falling 3.6s short of Virves and settling for fifth in front of the ailing Gryazin.
It was Virves’ first podium of the year on only his second start on any rally, WRC or otherwise, in 2024, though he couldn’t help but be disappointed at losing second earlier in the day.
“Even the podium in my situation isn’t what makes my day much better,” said Virves. “It’s a shame what happened but we must focus on the positives, that we had a really good place this weekend and I really hope it will help me to get some more driving.”
