The early favorite for WRC’s biggest prize

Mille Johansson dominated Junior ERC in 2024. Now he turns his attention to Junior WRC, as well as a Rally2 program

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Last year’s Junior WRC title went down to the wire. Its projected champion changed hands more than once in a flurry of first-day action on the 2024 season finale in Greece. No-one was really sure who to look at as outright favorite: eventual champion Romet Jürgenson could have easily been bested, had the right scenarios played out.

Fast forward to February 2025 and the situation isn’t quite the same. A huge title battle is expected across the season between a group of pre-season favorites. But in Sweden? There’s only one favorite: Mille Johansson.

Several competitors took on the snow and ice of Arctic Rally Finland last week, preparing themselves for the season opener. Reigning ERC Junior champion Johansson was nowhere to be seen: his feeling is that a bit of pre-event testing will be more than enough preparation.

He has reason to be confident. He dominated last year’s rally on his lone Junior WRC cameo – which was also his world-level debut.

“I think that we’re in a good position to fight for the title,” he asserted to DirtFish. “Sure, in Sweden we have a little bit of an advantage to the other drivers, as others maybe aren’t as used to snow as me. But I’ve still only done four winter rallies, so it’s not as much experience as maybe some people would think.

“But still I like snow very much and I think that’s where I perform my best.”

The Junior field is filled with potential title contenders. Taylor Gill, selected by the FIA for its Rally Star talent identification program, was runner up in last year’s title race and is back for another crack. Ali Türkkan was rapid on his limited program in 2024 – and WRC3 champion Diego Domínguez Jr. wants to make amends for a title tilt that never took off last season.

Johansson starting the season on his home round puts a bit of a target on his back. But he’s not stressed about this year being a title fight. In fact, he’s already thinking ahead to a post-Junior future, dovetailing his WRC commitments with campaigns in the European and Italian Gravel championships in an MS Munaretto-run Škoda Fabia.

“I wouldn’t say that I put pressure on myself for Junior WRC – but I have big goals for the future and to win Junior WRC this year would will be a good step for the next adventure,” Johansson succinctly summarizes. “We’d seen how a lot of drivers who went to WRC2 after winning Juniors had struggled to adapt and I wanted to avoid that.”

Sweden last year was the turning point for Johansson. Learning under one-time WRC2 champion Pontus Tidemand’s tutelage, Johansson had quietly gone about learning his craft in Slovenia and then the wider European continent without stealing any headlines. That all changed 12 months ago – and transformed him as a driver, too.

“The win in Rally Sweden [last year] was quite unexpected,” Johansson admits. “We were going there just to get some experience and see how our speed was. The confidence I got from that win, I was able to bring it into the ERC and go from there.”

Mille Johansson

Johansson was accomplished on all surfaces last year en route to the Junior ERC title

He was dominant in ERC last year, scooping both the Junior and outright ERC4 crowns with a round to spare. But, critically, Johansson is not a one-trick pony. He is not a traditional Nordic fast-gravel and snow specialist. One of his ERC Junior wins was on home soil – but the other was on Spanish asphalt. There was a podium finish on Welsh Tarmac too.

A pathway from Swedish junior rallies to world level has been meticulously plotted by the Johanssons – his father Patrik, himself a rally driver back in the day, has been strategizing his son’s pathway in a clever fashion.

While he’s threat number one in Sweden – he’s also got an ace up his sleeve for the other end of the season, Central European Rally, which pays double points.

“We made a plan when I started rallying in 2021 that we would drive the whole Slovenian tarmac championship,” Johansson explains. “That’s where I think all the Scandinavian drivers are lacking a bit of experience – it’s the Tarmac rounds because there aren’t any in Sweden. But when you come out to Europe, it’s a lot more asphalt.

“On the [ERC] calendar, half of the events were on asphalt. So that’s what we were aiming for instead, when we realized that we need tarmac driving.”

Mille JOHANSSON

The Swede has made a concerted effort to be strong on Tarmac

That stint in Slovenia fundamentally changed his thinking: “It’s more fine-tuning on the Tarmac, which I like more than gravel,” adds Johansson, defying almost every stereotype of Scandi rally drivers you can possibly imagine.

Going into 2025, Johansson has momentum on his side to a degree unlike any of his rivals. And his attitude is absent of any uncertainty over his ability to get the job done in 2025.

“We want to win the title in the Junior WRC, so we’re going to put a lot of effort into it and hopefully be able to start planning WRC2 for 2026.”

A season of WRC can only be taken one step at a time – but Johansson is planning some pretty big steps. Sweden will be the test of how closely the others can follow those footsteps – or if Johansson is thinking too many steps ahead.

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