Kalle Rovanperä is relishing a more level playing field in the World Rally Championship next year, believing “nobody knows who will be fast” as the WRC incorporates hybrid technology for the very first time.
Rovanperä has broken several records since competing at the top level of the WRC in Toyota in 2020. He is the youngest podium finisher, rally leader and rally winner with his pair of victories in Estonia and Greece this year.
At just 21 years old, Colin McRae’s record as the youngest ever World Rally Champion at 27 years, 109 days looks under serious threat too.
Arguably 2022 represents Rovanperä’s first realistic chance of challenging for the world championship given that he now has some experience of all the rallies, but perhaps more importantly none of his rivals have an experience advantage when it comes to the machinery either.
When Rovanperä made his debut in the Yaris WRC in 2020, most of his rivals had driven the latest generation of World Rally Cars for three seasons already.
“Yeah, of course that’s one really nice thing for myself at least,” Rovanperä told DirtFish. “It helps always to be a bit more on the same level of experience.
“Of course the cars are changing now so much that nobody knows who will be fast and things like this because I think the driving style and everything is changing so much.
“It’s not so straightforward maybe with the driving and how you can adapt to the new systems and stuff but hopefully we can do it well.”
Rovanperä, who finished fourth in this year’s title battle, admitted he can be “quite happy” with his second season at this level but confessed the season was “not perfect for sure”.
“Of course I’m quite happy with the races we could do cleanly through,” he said. “We had some disappointments yes, quite big ones also, so it has not been the easiest year but I think the performance has been all the time at a quite good level.
“I think overall I could say that I feel quite confident in all the conditions. Of course many times the trickiest part is just the conditions of the new rally, when you go first time somewhere it’s always a bit tricky with the pace.
“But yeah this year I think we had good pace on Tarmac rallies also so I would say I’m quite happy everywhere.”
Rovanperä’s main focus now, along with team-mate Elfyn Evans and Toyota test driver Juho Hänninen, has been testing the Yaris Rally1 the team will use in 2022, but he remained tight-lipped on any progress.
“From my side it has been going well all the time. Nothing special really,” he said.
“Of course it’s nice to be part of the new car and developing it, it’s lot of new things and a lot of stuff we need to do to try and make it as good as possible in quite short time so there is a lot of work to do, but it’s always quite interesting.”
