In the season-opening Rally Monte Carlo, the Toyota duo finished fourth. The result itself was not a disappointment, as Monte Carlo has never been one of Rovanperä’s favourite events.
In Rally Sweden, expectations were significantly higher, but Rovanperä had to settle for fifth place.
“The start of the season was not like we wanted. Sadly, the reason was some mistakes in the testing – or more like, the decisions we made after testing,” Halttunen told RallyJournal.com frankly.
Rovanperä struggled with Hankook’s new WRC tyres in both Monte Carlo and Sweden. More specifically, his main issue was finding car settings that would allow the tyres to perform optimally with his driving style.
Adjustments were made during both rallies, which helped improve pace, but…
“At this level, you should not change the car too much in the middle of the rally. If you do, you already lose the result on Friday – like what happened in Sweden,” Halttunen pointed out.
According to Halttunen, bad luck also played a role during pre-event testing.
“In Monte, on our test day, it was only ice, so we did not drive on dry roads at all. In the rally, there was a lot of dry surface, so we did not really know what to choose. It was a bit of a surprise how the Hankook tyre is. It is very different, and you cannot drive it as radically as the old tyres,” Halttunen explained.
“Before Sweden, on the last test day, the weather was almost minus 20 degrees, and the road was very hard ice. Then we go to the rally, and there is no freezing temperatures at all. Our settings did not work.”
Monte Carlo and Sweden are special cases in the WRC due to their unique conditions. Next week’s Safari Rally Kenya is also an outlier in terms of difficulty, but in character, it is slightly closer to the more traditional WRC rounds.
Halttunen is confident that Rovanperä can deliver a strong result in Kenya.
“I’m not worried. Now we are heading into a different kind of event, and we need to be more alert. We can look in the mirror, because in the end, we made the decisions for the car,” Halttunen emphasised.
