On paper, it looks like one of the most interesting WC rally seasons of the next few years is about to begin.
After all, there is a driver in three World Championship rally teams who was able to win more than one race in the previous season – Kalle Rovanperä at Toyota, Ott Tänak with M-Sport and Thierry Neuville With Hyundai.
The last time a similar situation was during the 2019 season, when Toyota, Hyundai and Citroen had in their stables drivers who had achieved more victories the previous year.
The season was still not smooth, but Tänak drove Toyota to an overwhelming championship, even though Neuville and Sebastien Ogier they also hit the combs.
The 2023 World Cup season can certainly be exciting, but no one will beat Kalle Rovanperä throughout the season.
The reasons for this can be divided into four justifications.
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1. M-Sport’s resource game is not enough and Tänak is eventually left on his feet
After the rule changes, M-Sport started the 2022 season with a bang. The car was more ready compared to the competitors and Sebastien Loeb won straight away in Monte Carlo.
The style had echoes from the 2017 season, when the first championship of the new generation of WRC cars went to M-Sport and Sebastien Ogier.
However, a private garage is a private garage. In the 2018 season, Ogier still drove for the championship, but he took most of the victories from the beginning of the season. Competitors rose alongside and past.
In the 2022 season, the realities hit even faster. While Toyota and Hyundai developed, M-Sport languished in place. Of course, the situation was emphasized by the fact that the team only had a winning driver in the races driven by Loeb. He showed the car’s potential by reaching the bottom time in each of the four races he drove. Rally Loeb led in Monte, Portugal and Greece.
Now M-Sport is driven by a winning driver throughout the season. Last year, Ott Tänak was the only one who could truly challenge Rovanperä. All M-Sport’s bets are on Tänak, though Pierre-Louis Loubet tentatively drives the whole season alongside the Estonian.
During the season, Tänak gets more test time than any of M-Sport’s drivers for years in the same time window. M-Sport gives a significant part of the 21 test days available at the team within the rules to Tänak. Allocating resources to Tänak reduces the advantage of competitors.
Unfortunately, M-Sport is already fundamentally behind Toyota and Hyundai. Both teams have been developing their cars for years also during the season. In this game, M-Sport has fallen behind rally after rally.
The austerity measures taken due to the corona pandemic accelerated the plunge. M-Sport simply does not have the resources of Toyota and Hyundai, nor does the main owner Malcolm Wilson sacrifices his company’s performance in order to pursue a single championship. Red Bull’s support helps a bit, but the red bull can’t be compared to the car manufacturers.
It wouldn’t be surprising if Tänak and M-Sport started the season convincingly. They have to invest in that, because the competitors inevitably develop more during the season.
2. Too weak for Neuville in too many rallies
Hyundai’s car developed the most during the 2022 season. In Monte Carlo, the work looked quite unfinished, but at the end of the season the team even managed to win three times.
The five wins are more than Hyundai has ever achieved in one season.
Unfortunately for Hyundai, only two of these wins went to Thierry Neuville. Especially in fast gravel rallies, he didn’t even come close to catching up with his teammate Tänak at the time.
Moderately performing on Power Stages, Neuville is strong on asphalt and in slow and grinding gravel rallies. The Belgian is systematically better than his competitors only in short public special stages.
The truth about the level is revealed from the WC calendar, from which it is much easier to name competitions where Neuville will definitely not succeed than those where he would be a clear favorite. In the last four seasons, he has only been able to win on tarmac or in grueling gravel races like Greece and Argentina.
Neuville’s trump card is a teammate. Esapekka in Lapland there is an opportunity to take points away from competitors in competitions like Finland and Estonia, where Neuville is not successful. The Finn might keep Neuville’s head afloat.
It’s just not enough if Neuville falls into mistakes at crucial moments. For example, last season he stopped the run-out from the top position in Belgium and only survived the run-out of the Power Stage in Croatia with luck.
In his career, Neuville has reached the best of four race wins in one season. The last time they won the championship with a similar number of wins was in 2018, if the 2020 season shortened by the corona virus is not included.
Last year, Neuville couldn’t even take a win in more than four races. So can we talk about him as a champion candidate?
To fight for the title, Neuville needs a perfect key season without technical troubles and driving mistakes.
3. Evans improves, but it doesn’t help
Toyota’s Elfyn Evans went into the last season as one of the biggest champion favourites. It says a lot about the past year that similar speeches have not been tuned into the season that is about to begin.
Evans’ previous World Championship rally victory is in Jyväskylä in autumn 2021. From Saturday onwards, the rally was sheer superiority of the Welshman.
There was no more glimpse of that dominance in the 2022 season. There is room for improvement, and Evans will certainly succeed in this, especially if the results from the very beginning of the season increase self-confidence.
The unfortunate truth is that Kalle Rovanperä won more rallies last season alone than Evans did in his entire career. The other statistics are not flattering either, because while Rovanperä was number one on the Power Stage seven times last year, Evans has reached number one in the final stage only twice in his career.
Evans’ speed reserve is simply not enough against Rovanperä. In order to get aboard Rovanperä, Evans has to take bigger risks than the Finn.
The risks, on the other hand, increase the chances of driving mistakes, which caused Evans to collect fewer points in the general competition than last season Takamoto Katsuta. Only the extra points on the Power Stage put the Welshman ahead of the Japanese in the overall results.
4. Rovanperä completely sovereign in one area
Examining Kalle Rovanperä’s closest challengers ultimately says more about Kalle Rovanperä than the competitors. The bar set by Rovanperä is so high that it’s hard to see anyone crossing it on a regular basis – except for Rovanperä himself.
It is difficult to justify why Rovanperä’s development would end with the world championship. When the Finn started at the WRC level, he was expected by experts to be ready to drive for the championship in the season just starting. So Pytty took off a year ahead of schedule.
Rovanperä’s greatest strength is related to the unpredictability of rally driving. He is the most inexperienced of the factory drivers in terms of the number of World Cup rallies together with Takamoto Katsuta, but despite this, Rovanperä washes away his opponents in difficult conditions like the most experienced multi-champion.
Last season saw several examples of this, the brightest being the performances of the Power Stage of the World Rally Championship in Croatia and Estonia in conditions that others were horrified by.
The World Series will remain flat throughout the season if the conditions remain unchanged, and if Rovanperä faces more technical problems or if his near misses turn into outs more often. This is all possible because it’s rally car racing.
The need for jostling tells about the head start that Rovanperä has over the others with his skill level and Toyota and karttur Jonne Halttunen thanks to the overall package it forms.
Still, the championship is not easily renewed. Mental recharging after a title is challenging for any top athlete, even though Rovanperä’s mental qualities are recognized as the best in the entire sport.
It must also be remembered that the rule book of the World Cup rally is coded against the dominant driver. From May’s World Rally in Portugal begins a streak of seven gravel races, in which the top name in the World Series will inevitably lose positions while plowing during the opening day, doing whatever between the bench and the wheel.