Secto Rally Finland has a way of delivering. It always has, and always will. But few could have predicted this year’s event would be quite that dramatic.
In many respects, this column should be renamed ‘What didn’t we learn from Finland?’ after such a chaotic event with more twists and turns than there are crests on Ouninpohja.
With so much to unpack, let’s not waste any more words on the intro and instead get straight into it:
Neuville back in the title ascendency
Just when it looked as if Ott Tänak had seized the momentum in the championship, closing to eight points behind Thierry Neuville before Finland, the series leader has been handed a MASSIVE opportunity by his rivals.
Tänak’s challenge was run early, crashing out on stage three and being unable to return for the rest of the weekend as co-driver Martin Järveoja spent the night in the hospital as a precaution.
The 2019 champion has had his fair share of issues on Fridays and Saturdays this season, but has always been able to recover ground in terms of points with some epic Super Sunday performances. Not so in Finland, which makes him the first big loser of this new points system with no classification or Super Sunday points to speak of.
Elfyn Evans should’ve benefited, running two places ahead of Neuville on Saturday before a broken driveshaft left him empty-handed. On a mission to recover as many points from Sunday as he could, Evans was second (four places ahead of Neuville) before he binned it on the very first corner of the penultimate stage. He too picked up nil points.
Ironically, Finland was one of Neuville’s more difficult weekends as he struggled to find any kind of feeling aboard his Hyundai. But with his two rivals dropping the ball, he now finds himself with a championship lead twice as strong as it was before the event.
A 27 point-lead over… Sébastien Ogier.
Ogier has begrudgingly accepted that he's in the 2024 season for the long haul
With all this ‘will he, won’t he’ talk about chasing a ninth world title (despite being supposed to be competing in a partial season), Ogier now finds himself leading Toyota’s challenge in the drivers’ championship.
Ogier a title contender (whether he likes it or not)
If you’d asked Séb about chasing a ninth championship this time last year, you’d have been met with a very stern look before a fiery response about asking stupid questions.
Now? No journalist would be doing their job without enquiring.
Whether he likes it or not, Ogier is now in this title race. Granted, his deficit to points leader Neuville hasn’t really changed (now 27 instead of 28) but with nine more points than Evans, statistically he is the Toyota driver with the best odds of putting the brakes on Neuville’s title dreams.
It’s not yet confirmed that Ogier will contest the rest of the season – but we do know he will be in Greece and at the finish line in Finland he effectively conceded such an outcome was inevitable.
The Acropolis could prove trickier than the rest though, as the supposed part-timer will be starting right up at the front (second on the road) with both Tänak and Evans behind.
Rovanperä’s Finland curse remains
Could you have called it a curse before?
Rovanperä's Rally Finland has been ended by crashes for two years in a row now
In 2021, Kalle simply misjudged it. In 2022, he was bested by an inspired Tänak. Last year, maybe that’s when things turned against him with a strange slide causing a slow end-over-end roll.
But this year was just cruel. Kalle Rovanperä (and Finland)’s wait for a home win goes on, and there was nothing the world champion could have done about it.
He’d done the work – leading by over 45 seconds – but a rock in the line sent the GR Yaris Rally1 off line and from there Rovanperä and Jonne Halttunen were passengers as they headed for the trees.
Perhaps the silver lining is this result doesn’t impact any personal championship challenge, but that’s clutching at straws. Rovanperä’s accident cost Toyota dearly in the manufacturers’ race, and harmed his team-mates’ drivers’ title chances too as it sent more points in Neuville’s direction.
Finland just seems to be the rally Rovanperä is unable to win.
Hyundai odds-on for manufacturers’ title
Hyundai was massively let off the hook in Finland.
At one stage of the weekend, Toyota was holding a 1-2-3-4 and even when Takamoto Katsuta dropped out, it still had the podium locked out. When Evans’ driveshaft failed, a Yaris 1-2 still looked guaranteed.
Neuville has 23 reasons to smile after Finland – far more than he likely expected before the rally began
The unbelievable drama of Rovanperä and Evans crashing at opposite ends of the very same stage changed everything. Instead of Toyota moving to the top of the table, Hyundai actually extended his lead from one to 20 points. In a season as close as this, that could be decisive.
It is perhaps unfair to flat-out suggest Hyundai was lucky, but Finland was hardly a vintage weekend for it. Tänak was out of the game just three stages in, while Esapekka Lappi had a second nightmare rally in a row. Neuville got second but more via process of elimination than any individual brilliance.
In the Belgian’s words, Finland was the first event this season where Hyundai lacked performance. That’s got to be some concern, but the knowledge it has snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in a championship sense will comfort the entire team immensely.
Pajari can cut it in Rally1
The Mārtiņš Sesks comparisons were inevitable after the Latvian punched in two mega Rally1 performances in Poland and Latvia – could Sami Pajari live up to it?
In short, yes.
Like Sesks, he too claimed a stage win and proved himself more than capable of mixing it with the big guns in the big cars.
Pajari's rally started with his GR Yaris Rally1 in bits. By the end of the rally, both the car and his debut had been put back together.
There was a hiccup on Friday morning where he spun and then lost his rear wing, but given it was Pajari’s first time driving the car in wet conditions that was certainly excusable. His response to get his head down, regroup for the afternoon and then win a stage was sensational.
The big difference between Sesks and Pajari is the Finn’s WRC future looks far more secure. This was a fully-fledged outing with a manufacturer that has long looked interested in his services. The question seems to be if, not when, Sami will be back in the Rally1 car.
The only bad news for Pajari all weekend was Oliver Solberg, who claimed a second successive WRC2 win (and third of the season) almost at a canter to really assert himself in the title race.
Latvala’s still got it
Ahead of the event, Jari-Matti Latvala admitted he was curious where he would stack up against the WRC2 field, considering his pace in the Rally1 car on last year’s Rally Finland.
The answer was well. Very well.
Solberg proved a bit too strong for him, but Latvala was a clear second-best all weekend and showed absolutely none of his old magic behind the steering wheel had vanished.
Jari-Matti Latvala rolled back the years with his Finland performance
It’s unlikely this will lead to many more, if any, outings for the Finn, who has a clear responsibility as team principal for Toyota Gazoo Racing. But it’s obvious for all to see that J-ML relishes getitng inside that cockpit. And it’s clear he can still do a job in there too.
Lack of testing hurts M-Sport
A podium result (the fourth of the season) was a mega result for Adrien Fourmaux and an example of never giving up given how far he’d come to get there.
There’s been a bit more frustration from Fourmaux in the last two events; in Finland, the lack of a pre-event test was clearly irking him.
With shallower pockets than its rivals and no permanent test site in Finland, M-Sport chose to do just one test for the Poland, Latvia and Finland triple header, leaving both Fourmaux and Grégoire Munster chasing the perfect setup on the first morning.
Fourmaux's set-up was up in the air at the rally start due to the testing deficit to rival teams
That left Fourmaux ticked off, but he started chipping away and got the car to a place where he was happy. By that point he had lost too much time but, over the course of the rally, his stage times were improving and his perseverance was rewarded with a podium when disaster struck Rovanperä.
Yet another underdog podium is a big boost for M-Sport Ford, but the better Fourmaux gets (and he seems to keep getting better) the bigger issues like a comparative lack of testing will feel to him.
