Unprecedented. Amazing. Shock. Among other things, these words have been used on Monday, when Kalle Rovanperä told about his surprise solution. The two-time rally world champion will drive only half of the World Championship races next season.
The words have the right proportions when a 23-year-old athlete who exceptionally dominated the sport makes such a decision. You really don’t see something like this every year in the sports world.
On the other hand, Rovanperä is not about to stop driving the rally for the first time.
Rovanperä, who started driving at the age of eight, confessed in the beginning of 2020 in the Tom’s notes podcast that he got tired of rally driving in his pre-teens and left the rally car in the garage for a year.
That’s when the fire for rallying returned with a young man whose driving has been buzzing since he was a little boy and dumbfounded YouTube clips.
Rovanperä said in Tom’s notes podcast that a year’s break could have saved his career. Otherwise, driving might have stopped altogether.
Now the passion for rally driving in full might return again.
At least there is an agreement between Rovanperä and Toyota that the Finnish star would drive a full season again in 2025 and fight for the world rally championship after a year’s break.
If this doesn’t happen and Rovanperä finds stimulation elsewhere, then even then no one should have a knock on the nose.
Rovanperä justified his sabbatical decision by saying that at the age of 23, he has already been rallying for 15 years. According to Rovanperä, the last few seasons in the World Rally Championship have been great, but also very draining, physically and mentally.
The words brought to mind the thoughts of another Finnish athlete after he ended his career. Wrestler Petra Olli got to explain to many his own decision to quit after he ended his career at the age of 25. Olli stated that he had an 18-year working career in wrestling, measured from the first competition of his life to the last.
– If someone’s working career is 18 years, yes, it is quite a long career, world champion and multiple medalist Olli said and reminded that he spent ten years at the international top of adults.
– It’s quite a long time. When comparing athletes, one’s career continues into their forties, another into their twenties, and another into their twenties. So is it just a matter of time? If everything is full on the meter and you want to move forward in life, so what, Olli reminded in July 2020 and hit the heart of the matter.
Whether unintentional or not, Rovanperä’s shock decision also sent a message to the World Rally Championship, which is struggling with its future.
For a long time, there has been criticism about how the WC rally weekends are unnecessarily long. It’s not just about driving from Thursday to Sunday.
For example, in Urheilu’s podcast the other week, Rovanperä’s kartturi Jonne Halttunen described how the days can get really long. Halttunen stated that the work might take 19 hours. Five hours left to sleep. Rovanperä has also described himselfthat from the drivers’ point of view, the days are really long.
Like a map reader, a driver can sleep for up to five hours. So it’s really not a treat when you have to push through special tests at breakneck speed without losing concentration at all. From this point of view, Rovanperä’s solution is also understandable.
One big reason behind the problem is that the World Rally Championship has not kept up with the development of technology. Today, the drivers are perfecting their notes with the help of videos taken from special tests. It has really stretched out the drivers’ days.
The reactions of the competitors underline the miserable situation
The World Rally Championship has not kept up with today’s development anyway. Today’s popular sporting events are fast-paced and full of drama. As an example, let’s mention that in World Cup rallies, the closing day on Sunday is too often almost only driving.
Rovanperä himself has spoken about how, from the spectators’ point of view, the games should be made more compact. Aptly, Rovanperä’s fiercest rivals also pointed out the problems of the World Series when rally media Dirtfish asked reactions to the shock decision of the sport’s biggest star.
– Something is going really wrong, Hyundai Thierry Neuville said Rovanperä about half a sabbatical, and he was not warmed at all by the loss of one tough competitor from the already small championship standings.
Coming back as Neuville’s teammate next season Ott Tänakia there was time to speculate as to Rovanperä’s fiercest rival before the Finnish star’s surprise bet. Tänak expressed his opinion about Rovanperä’s solution even more directly.
– This shows that there is something missing in the sport when a young champion does not want to ride the whole season. Clearly, there is something rotten here. I really hope this will open the eyes of the promoter and the International Automobile Association, Tänak said.
Neuville’s and especially Tänak’s words describe really well where we are going in the World Rally Championship. Few Teams and few drivers fighting for the championship. It’s not even that there aren’t ideas for developing the World Rally Championship.
There have been enough of them throughout the season in different instances. Now you just have to decide what would be worth trying. In this stagnant state, the future of the World Rally Championship starts to be threatened.
Finally the long-awaited victory in the Jyväskylä World Rally Championship?
The Finns also face an exceptional situation, since at least at the moment there is not a single Finn driving a full season in the World Series and fighting for the championship.
For Rovanpera, fighting for the championship in half a season is not realistic. The statistics from Rovanperä’s two previous championship seasons already show that.
Even though Rovanperä has won the championships by a clear margin, the runners-up have also collected a decent pot. This year Elfyn Evans scored 216 points. So winning seven races out of thirteen and adding Power Stages would still not win the championship.
In 2022, the runner-up Ott Tänak collected 205 points, which means that even then he would have had to run seven races with an almost perfect balance, so that it would even be theoretically possible to fight for the championship.
It is also still unclear whether Rovanperä will run six or seven races next season.
Even if Rovanperä as a show driver gets better starting places in the races, winning every race is still very unlikely.
However, one competition will be a jackpot for Rovanpera. Suomalaistahtih has not yet managed to win its home race, the Jyväskylä World Rally Championship.
In previous years, starting at the top has been a big setback for Rovanpera, when the Finn has to plow gravel roads. Next year, there won’t be a similar problem on home roads anymore.
At the moment, the World Rally Championship in Jyväskylä is experiencing the longest period in history without a Finnish winner. The last time a Finnish driver reached the highest podium on the gravel roads of Central Finland was in 2017. In August of next year, it is even more likely that this dry pipe will break.