Kalle Rovanpera - rallying's youngest champion

[Kenneth]

Kalle's livery for Formula Regional Oceania. First race is tomorrow at midnight CET.

Link to Reddit, for some reason i cant upload the picture here.

[TypeR]

Kalle's livery for Formula Regional Oceania. First race is tomorrow at midnight CET.

Link to Reddit, for some reason i cant upload the picture here.

[saco0o]

livestream for qualy in 25h from now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iey-Z99L2Ik

dammit cannot believe im going to start to follow open wheel racing lol

[Steve Boyd]

dammit cannot believe im going to start to follow open wheel racing lol

I think I can feel the disturbance in The Force - somebody is moving to The Dark Side

[Maui J.]

A bit of a tough start for Kalle. He qualified 16th out of the 19 cars, but in saying that he was basically just over one second behind the pole sitter. The cars are super close in performance. Pole 1:29.267 Kalle 1:30.307

Race 1 has just finished, the results say he was 16th overall, but the commentators were saying their could be a 10 second infringement coming his way which drop him to last TBC

The results will show very average start, but he was up against seasoned F3, GB3, F4, and even a Supercar driver. Definitely room for improvement once he gets used to the car, the tracks, etc

I'm heading to the track tomorrow for the Sunday races so hopefully I'll grab a few photos.

[Maui J.]

Race #2
Much better for Kalle. He started 17th (his final position from Race #1) and finished up 11th, probably the biggest improvement of all the drivers, so it looks like the race-craft is coming. He had a good mid-field, back-and-forth battle and was up to 10th a few times but slipped back just before the finish.

[saco0o]

ehhhh... its harder when theres 20 entries all on the same car. most of these kids are coming from road racing and karting and open wheel racing already. as a fan I was hoping kalle would be beating everybody from day 1 in open wheel but I guess we are going to have to wait a little bit! interesting anyway tho!

[Doon]

Seeing his results from a national event in NZ this weekend, I think we can assume that he’ll be back in WRC in the near future. He’s not going to make it to F1.

[Maui J.]

A very hot day at Hampton Downs race track today.

Race #3. Kalle started 18th, and finished 13th. With the 9th fastest lap time.

Race #4 Started 9th, but was involved in a big accident at the first corner that knocked out 5 cars so that was the end of his weekend unfortunately.

There are 12 more races over the next 3 weekends.

Results can be found here. https://www.toyota.co.nz/toyota-raci...endar-results/

[Kenneth]

Seeing his results from a national event in NZ this weekend, I think we can assume that he’ll be back in WRC in the near future. He’s not going to make it to F1.

I also don't think Kalle will make it into F1, but common, you can't make any conclusions from this event so far.

It isn't "national event in NZ" by any mean, it's the most prestigious off-season formula series and it's pretty much full of experienced F4-FR-F3 drivers who races on circuits since they were small kids.

On the other hand, Kalle had only like 4 test sessions so far in his open wheen career before his first race. He should be dead last by any mean, yet he wasn't. He also showed some good racecraft there.

His goal isn't to win the races, but to finish them and show his potential, and it will be same in SF. We can make some conclusions in his second F2 season, not now lol.