Rovanperä is participating in the second round of the Finnish Rally Championship in Rovaniemi, aiming to get a feel for winter rallying ahead of the Swedish WRC round happening in a couple of weeks.
The opening day of the Arctic Rally went smoothly for Rovanperä, as the Finnish star managed to outpace his team-mate Elfyn Evans, who is driving a similar Toyota Rally1 car, by nearly 25 seconds over five special stages.
“It’s been quite enjoyable. The roads are in fantastic condition, even better than we expected after the recce. The weather turned out great, and we’ve been able to make a lot of changes and improvements to the car, which of course was our main goal here. So in that sense, it’s been a positive day,” Rovanperä told RallyJournal.com.
Rovanperä’s day was nearly perfect, setting the fastest times on the first four stages ahead of Evans. However, the Welshman managed to claw back 0.2 seconds on the final Mäntyvaara spectator stage.
“I even said to Jonne (Halttunen) at the end of the stage that it ruined my mood for the day when I heard Elfyn’s time. I don’t even know by how much I lost, but it seems there wasn’t much in it,” Rovanperä quipped.
Although the rally serves purely as a test event for both Rovanperä and Evans, competition is fierce.
“It’s been regular rally racing,” Rovanperä said.
“Surely both of us are driving as hard as we can. That’s how the car needs to perform when we head to Sweden next. There we’ll definitely be pushing to our limits.”
So far, the Arctic adventure has been fruitful for Rovanperä.
“Last year we were not good in Sweden, and the car wasn’t fast. We didn’t get the car right during the winter tests in December, so this weekend is important. Now we’ve managed to achieve quite a lot,” Rovanperä concluded.
“We’ve made progress. At least, we’ve got an idea of where we need to be.”
