Having stepped away from the World Rally Championship, Rovanperä’s main focus this year is Japan’s Super Formula series, which begins in April. However, he is already getting up to speed in January in New Zealand, where he is competing in the Formula Regional Oceania Championship.
The Oceanian series is run entirely during January. The schedule is demanding, with a total of 15 starts across four race weekends.
The season kicks off this coming weekend at Hampton Downs Motorsport Park. Rovanperä and the rest of the field were already in action on Thursday during an unofficial test day.
Rovanperä was not able to match the pace of the front-runners, but the Finn improved his performance over the course of the day. In the first test session, he set the 15th fastest time, finishing 1.314 seconds off the benchmark set by Louis Sharp.
Driving for the Hitech TGR team, Rovanperä improved his lap time by just over a tenth of a second in the second test session. This time he placed 13th among 19 drivers, with a gap of 1.134 seconds to the fastest time.
Rovanperä was still working on the car set-up, as he completed the second-fewest laps of the entire field. In total, the Finn completed 21 laps during the day.
See photos from Rovanperä’s test below:
All indications suggest that Rovanperä is now fit. In December, he was forced to cut short Super Formula testing in Japan after suffering from positional vertigo.
Official practice sessions are scheduled for Friday at Hampton Downs, with three 30-minute runs on the programme. Saturday will feature qualifying followed by the first two races.
The race weekend concludes on Sunday, when two further starts will be contested after qualifying.
