Kalle Rovanperä significantly boosted his WRC title chances – and gave a very promising statement about what’s to come

Rovanperä never truly entered the fight for the rally win, but he drove a consistent and solid event, keeping pace reasonably well with rally winner Sébastien Ogier and Hyundai’s Ott Tänak.

But then came Sunday—and that’s when things truly ignited. Rovanperä had a stunning final day, winning both the Super Sunday classification and the Power Stage.

As a result, he walked away from Sardinia with an impressive 25 championship points and managed to close the gap to his teammate and current championship leader Elfyn Evans, who finished fourth.

“I think we can be pretty satisfied with this. It’s a big haul of points considering where we started on Friday,” Rovanperä summed up.

“That was the whole plan. The idea was to drive a clean weekend. We knew there would be incidents, as there always are in a rally like this. Our goal was simply to avoid trouble. On Saturday and Sunday, we had good pace. Really strong points,” he added contentedly.

Sardinia has never been among Rovanperä’s favourite events.

“It actually felt pretty good. I don’t think this is ever going to be one of those rallies I enjoy the most. But at least the car was in a good place—we didn’t have to keep thinking about setup changes all the time. We found a solid baseline setup that let us push at a good pace,” Rovanperä reflected.

Thanks to the strong points haul, Rovanperä closed the gap to championship leader Evans to just 20 points. On paper, if the trend continues, the Finn could be right in the thick of the title fight by the time Rally Finland takes place in August.

“Of course, there are still plenty of twists and turns before that, but as I said before the weekend, the main goal was to take points off Elfyn. We managed to do that really well on Sunday,” Rovanperä said.

Toyota’s part-time driver Ogier also moved past Rovanperä in the standings by a single point and now sits second. But even that, Rovanperä sees as a positive.

“It’s good that Seb is ahead now going into Greece. That’s not a bad situation at all.”