Rally Islas Canarias can best be summarized by comments from Sébastien Ogier after just the opening trio of stages.
“It’s two surprises,” Ogier began. “One is Kalle, clearly ahead, and also Hyundai, clearly behind.”
The World Rally Championship’s first visit to the Canary Islands became Kalle Rovanperä’s playground as he made the world’s very best drivers look second-rate.
To have an eight-time world champion like Ogier covered at every turn is the best endorsement you can give Rovanperä as he vaulted from sixth to second in the drivers’ championship with a perfect 35-pointer, crafted through 15 stage wins from 18.
“Without him, I would have won a lot of stages – won the rally!” Ogier laughed.
But the Rovanperä resurgence was matched by a hapless Hyundai, which dramatically dropped the ball as Toyota smashed its third maximum points score from four events.
Hyundai was consipicuous by its absence from the podium celebrations
“It felt like we came here for, I don’t know, being more a tourist than a racing driver this weekend,” surmised a frustrated Thierry Neuville.
Meanwhile shying away from the headlines, the man who’d written his name up in lights on the rounds prior quietly extended his podium run and, with it, his world championship lead.
Rovanperä on a “different planet”
Believing his team-mate was “on a different planet” was another powerful admission from Ogier, who quickly had to accept that, for once, this was simply not going to be his weekend.
“Of course, I prefer more the races when I’m able to fight and to challenge really for the win,” he admitted, “but sometimes it’s just not possible.”
No advice necessary from the old master on this occasion
The painful thing for the serial winner is his defeat dawned on him right from the outset.
Stage one is always an opportunity to send your rivals a message. Play some psychological warfare and destroy their effort, establishing yourself as the one to beat.
‘Catch me if you can’ would usually be an appropriate phrase, but in Rovanperä’s case it was more ‘give up now’.
Gaps are supposed to be close between drivers on dry Tarmac rallies. The lack of opportunities to cut corners keeps the road conditions consistent for all, setting up what’s supposed to be a thrilling contest.
So if Rovanperä’s opening effort to establish a menacing 6.5-second lead wasn’t impressive enough, try this: he was not beaten to a scratch time for 36 hours after the start of the rally.
“I have to be honest, I’m quite surprised that the gaps are so big,” the double world champion confessed, rocking up to first service with a 17.8s lead.
One man is in his own leagueSébastien Ogier
“But of course when it’s this way, it’s quite OK.”
Quite OK?! Ogier (are you noticing a theme here?) had better words for the situation.
“It’s been a decent start,” said the Frenchman, “but one man is in his own league at the moment and we definitely don’t have an answer to his speed at the moment.”
The reason why is fascinating considering the narrative of Rovanperä’s season up to Canaries.
“I believe that most of the answer in that is this new tire,” Ogier offered. “It’s the first race with these tires, and we are all still working on it to understand it perfectly and make the best setup.
Hankook's hard-compound asphalt rubber played a role in a reversal of fortunes for Toyota's two world champions
“I heard a lot since the beginning of the year that he was struggling with these new tire, not happy, but it looks like the hard tires are suiting him pretty well at the moment.”
Undoubtedly words used to propel Rovanperä into the position of ‘the one with everything to lose’. But the thing is, you sensed Ogier believed it.
So with the winner signed, sealed and seemingly on his way to be delivered almost from the outset, attention turned to the cars that were conspicuous by their absence from the top of the leaderboard.
Hyundai’s “worst team performance”
Adrien Fourmaux’s shared stage win with Ogier – and, remarkably, the Rally2 Citroën of Yohan Rossel – around a go-kart track saved some face for Hyundai, which was also the only team to have all three of its Rally1 cars reach the finish in Las Palmas.
However that would be the glass half-full approach that only the most extreme optimist would view Hyundai’s Canaries as.
Tänak didn't hold back with his verdict on Hyundai's showing
Tänak’s take that this was “the worst team performance” from Hyundai struck an equally extreme, yet more realistic, tone.
The i20 N Rally1 just never got going in the Canaries. Why?
“We haven’t done our homework properly before coming here,” lamented Hyundai technical director François-Xavier Demaison, “but it’s motorsport, it’s rallying.
“We have a new tire manufacturer and we didn’t expect to have so many issues with managing the tires through the days. So yes, we are scratching our heads.”
The verdict was Hankook’s hard compound – which drivers used for the first time last week – exaggerated a weakness in the car that could not be remedied on-site. Realistically, it cannot be remedied without use of a homologation joker – of which Hyundai has only one left.
Fourmaux, who was running a softer differential setup than Neuville and Tänak, pinpointed the diff and damper as problematic areas – which is worrying, given Hyundai recently homologated a new suspension setup for February’s Rally Sweden.
“Nobody could ignore the missing performance of the Hyundais this weekend,” said a frank Neuville. “So it’s frustrating, definitely. And disappointing for all of us, because everybody has put the hard work into it, starting from me and Martijn [Wydaeghe, co-driver], but also the team.
“But just something went wrong. We will put the finger on it and we will also, I think, all together try to dig even deeper to find what it needs. Is it related to tire? I don’t think only, but is it a part of it? Probably yes.
“And then, yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of other things we’re going to discuss internally and see what we can quickly improve and what takes more time.”
But as poor as Hyundai was relative to expectation, Toyota was equally perfect.
“Clearly we were not well prepared, [but] Toyota at the same time was very well prepared,” Tänak believes.
Hyundai i20 N was unable to find same levels of grip as its rival
“So I mean it’s clearly a unique event and I guess at the moment it’s just this rally. But generally, for sure, they’ve done a very good job and we were just not at their level.”
Four GR Yarises beat the leading Hyundai in Gran Canaria – and that most likely would have been five had Sami Pajari not stuffed it on Saturday afternoon.
Where Rovanperä really made the difference
Back up front, the game had changed.
A “realistic” Ogier recognized Rovanperä was “untouchable” in the overall classification, so woke up on Saturday morning striving to match the Finn’s rhythm instead.
He nearly managed it. But at every turn, Rovanperä had an answer. Another 10.1s were added to his lead over the morning loop.
“Obviously, still the same name on the top of the list,” Ogier smiled wryly, potentially through the pain – particularly as Rovanperä had cheekily exclaimed he wasn’t even pushing.
“Well, on these kind of roads, the flow is mostly just about having a good pace in a way that you don’t need to push a lot,” he explained.
“But you need to drive properly so that then all the pacenotes and everything makes sense. If you start to be careful, then sometimes you are too fast, sometimes you are too slow, and yeah, everything just goes more difficult. Just trying to have a good pace all the time so then it comes more naturally.”
But this was the surprise – it was coming naturally. A seemingly unthinkable statement merely a few months ago, but everything that had been said about Rovanperä’s (lack of) affinity with Hankook’s tires was proving to be the opposite once the hard Tarmac rubber was bolted to his Toyota.
Here you can feel what's happening under the tireKalle Rovanperä
“On this kind of smooth Tarmac anyway, it’s more about driving and feeling the tire,” Rovanperä analyzed.
“Normally in rally we are quite much more, in a way, aggressive. We need to be more aggressive so then the driving style becomes a bit more difficult to adjust.
“Here you can feel what’s happening under the tire and then it’s more about… actually the driving is more about that. So yeah, you can just try to feel where the optimal grip is.”
Those who thought Rovanperä’s circuit racing exploits during his ‘gap year’ in 2024 were a distraction may need to think again.
As do those who’d written off his world championship chances this year.
Rovanperä's medal-winning drive was his first victory in seven months
I’ll front up: I was one of them. Yes this year’s points system works differently to others from years gone by, but a 57-point deficit was a heavy handicap to carry; particularly when Rovanperä was operating at a level far from his best.
But on Gran Canaria, he was back. We spent a long time debating the merit of that statement in the DirtFish car during the rally weekend, but I struggle to see how it cannot be true.
Nobody’s questioned the ability of the man, but his form had hardly been inspirational. How things can turn around.
“I think we did a really good preparation on the pacenotes because [it was] all new stages,” Rovanperä said. “But then I think overall it comes to the setup being really good. And also I probably understood the tire pretty well, because I felt I could use the tire really well. No overheating, no pushing against the tire, just driving how the tire wants to be driven and it works so well.”
Nevertheless, he’s been quick to caution that the switch back to gravel for the next seven events still represents a question mark: “I think there is nothing related on this rally to going back on gravel, so there will be nothing the same.”
But this was a devastating reminder of what Rovanperä can really do. Ogier’s in a different point of his career now – admitting midway through Rally Islas Canarias that “when you are over 40 then maybe it’s more difficult to be on the edge” in certain conditions.
Ogier was unable to skirt the limit quite as closely as his younger team-mate
In this reality – having also not driven a car in anger since January – he was never going to be equipped to take on such an invigorated Rovanperä. But would even Ogier in his prime have had an answer?
Maybe the biggest winner out of all of this is Evans. The Welshman may have been beaten by his two team-mates, but despite this he’s still moved a further seven points away from the chasing championship pack – owing much to Neuville’s nightmare; the world champion scraping together a mere seven points from round four (far from helped by a penultimate-stage puncture).
Rovanperä is not going to have an insane road position advantage in Portugal, having moved up to second spot in the standings. That should help keep him at bay for longer if he is going to keep turning up like he did last week.
But here’s the thing, if there’s one man Evans did not want breathing down his neck, it’s Kalle Rovanperä.
He did his best to make hay while the sun shone, but now the race is on. The ball is still in Evans’ court, but for how much longer?
