Rovanpera leads stellar Toyota cast for Safari Rally

The 2022 WRC Safari Rally champion Kalle Rovanpera is entering selected events in this year's World Rally Championship and will return to Kenya without pressure for results.

This is after he decided to take a back seat from the demands of high level competition to catch up with fun of his "lost youthful days."

"I want to make use of the time and do what I want to do,” said Rovanpera.

"It’s a little bit like catching up with your [youth], with what you were doing when you were younger. Of course, you cannot really catch up… when you are a teenager and you are a professional, you always have some place where you need to be and you miss out on many things that other people are doing," he told the press last year.

“I want to use next year (2024).  It’s a lot of time for my personal things out of motorsport. There are trips to take. I want to visit places where I want to go.

“I think everybody is expecting I will do a full season of drifting – but that just doesn’t make sense. Why would I do that? Why would I take time off and then fill it up with something else? I’m not planning so much to drive drifting or rallying. There will be some nice events to enjoy and then I would like to use a little bit of time on the circuit too.”

Since he was captured drifting a car in the forests of Latvia aged nine--a clip which became an overnight sensation in 2022 on social media as he started notching victory after victory to become the youngest world champion aged 21--Rovanpera has already become folklore, a man who will pull the sport and win more world titles than any other driver in history by the time he is 30.

Rovanpera did not grow up enjoying the small but invaluable things of the youth after he immersed himself in the world of motoring, always encouraged by his equally famous father Harri Rovanpera, second in Kenya in 2001 driving a Peugeot 206 WRC. He has done virtually everything a man can do in top level racing and in various disciplines, from karting, drifting and rallying.

He is now thinking of Toyota’s World Endurance Championship-winning hypercar.

“I’d definitely like to test that,” he said. “You can see how well they’re doing in WEC. We have to try a simulator test first and it depends from that – you need to be fast enough to go in the real car.
Nothing is planned with this, [but] this is what I am thinking."

Toyota has dominated the last three editions of the WRC Safari, including a replica of the 1993 Safari last year when they took all the first four positions. The teams announced its driver line-up of Rovanpera, Elfyn Evans and Takamoto Katsuta. They decided to rest last year's Safari winner Sebastien Ogier, confident of once again dominating this year's Safari.

After missing the World Rally Championship season opener in Monte Carlo, Rovanpera made his first start of 2024 in Rally Sweden, where he finished a disappointing 39th overall after crashing out of the rally while leading on Friday.

Inclusion on the Kenya entry list means Rovanpera will compete in two consecutive WRC events. The Finn contested the first round of his partial WRC season at Rally Sweden last month where he led the rally before crashing out on stage four. The two-time world champion rejoined the event salvaging 11 points after finishing second in the Super Sunday classification in addition to a Power Stage win.

Rovanpera’s WRC schedule beyond Kenya is yet to be announced although it is likely that he will appear in Latvia and Finland rounds.

Elsewhere, Hyundai has told Motorsport.com that its third factory entry will be piloted by Rally Sweden winner Esapekka Lappi.

Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville leads the championship standing by three points over Evans, with M-Sport’s Adrien Fourmaux in third.