Kalle Rovanpera - rallying's youngest champion

[Mk2 RS2000]

Wait until he starts getting interested in girls... Or when girls start getting interesting in him... Then we will see how much ambition, focus and determination he has...

So very true, there is insufficient blood in a young mans body to keep two heads functioning correctly.

[Essaj]

Time to lift this thread up.

Kalle has now won on snow, tarmac and gravel back-to-back-to-back and leads the championship by 46points!

[WRCStan]

Is there anybody out there who doesn't believe Kalle is yet an A-lister? ie one who goes into every event with the expectation to fight for a win. Many are electing him champion after all.

[Fast Eddie WRC]

He's the real deal now and proven on every surface and even with opening the road on dry gravel.

The rest need to learn to eat his dust.

[Danny0405]

One point to notice also about Kalle is it shows how the job done by Makinen was great.
He created a structure from scratch quite late after Toyota has changed its strategy, he made some controversial choices that globally worked (Latvala instead of Mikkelsen, Lappi instead of Suninen), installed a very good technical director (Fowler) and he prepared the future because he was the one who did the job to attract Rovanpera (giving him tests in the WRC car, clear decision from him to put him in 2020 that was known as soon as summer 2019).
Ok, some can say it was easy as he is Finnish and Rovanpera was obvious but apparently, it was not the case for Hyundai (I’m not talking about M-Sport which didn’t have the means to attract him on a long-term basis but have tried in 2017).

He suffered one blow (Tanak leaving) because of his personality that was covered by Toyota money to take Ogier and made one controversial choice that ended up as a mistake (Meeke) but globally, his job was excellent.

Trivia statistics: Kalle is already 10th in the rankings of Finnish with most WRC wins (but he will probably climbs a lot)

[240RS]

Looking down the season calendar, you can't help but notice that the events that supposedly favour Kalle are yet to come.

Estonia & Finland - Both virtually home events and you can expect he will be running very high up the order.
Kenya - Was primed to lead last year's event before the "fesh-fesh" disaster.
Greece - Won at a canter in 2021.
Belgium - Was best Toyota in impressive fashion last year.

The rest of the events aren't that much of a problem for him either. You would expect he will find the right pace in Italy, Spain, New Zealand and Japan.

Conclusion: Game over in 2022.

[SubaruNorway]

One point to notice also about Kalle is it shows how the job done by Makinen was great.
He created a structure from scratch quite late after Toyota has changed its strategy, he made some controversial choices that globally worked (Latvala instead of Mikkelsen, Lappi instead of Suninen), installed a very good technical director (Fowler) and he prepared the future because he was the one who did the job to attract Rovanpera (giving him tests in the WRC car, clear decision from him to put him in 2020 that was known as soon as summer 2019).
Ok, some can say it was easy as he is Finnish and Rovanpera was obvious but apparently, it was not the case for Hyundai (I’m not talking about M-Sport which didn’t have the means to attract him on a long-term basis but have tried in 2017).

He suffered one blow (Tanak leaving) because of his personality that was covered by Toyota money to take Ogier and made one controversial choice that ended up as a mistake (Meeke) but globally, his job was excellent.

Trivia statistics: Kalle is already 10th in the rankings of Finnish with most WRC wins (but he will probably climbs a lot)

It was actually Latvala who replaced Suninen in 17, talks about it on the WRC podcast

[Essaj]

Kalle Rovanperä The Youngest World Rally Champion!

[doubled1978]

Mighty impressive from the young fella.
Fully deserved, came through his sticky patch and did a brilliant job

[lmmjvss]

It was AWESOME to kinda follow this kid's carrer. From those weird clips of a what 8 y.o. kid drifting on ice to becoming a WORLD CHAMPION! Jeez, time passes like a bullet. Awesome! AWESOME