Rovanpera overcomes a tough start to shine in WRC 2 Pro while Solans lifts JWRC
This year was going to be a walk in the park for Kalle Rovanpera. Yes, he was only 18 at the start of the year, and yes, there was a bit of pressure, but he had a factory Skoda and, well… he’s Kalle Rovanpera – the WRC’S wunderkind to end all wunderkinds.
He would, the storyline went, have the allnew WRC 2 Pro title all sorted by the end of the Finnish summer. Some even went so far as to suggest that he could be swapping a Fabia R5 for a Toyota Yaris WRC before the end of the year. Then he crashed on the Monte. And in Sweden. And in Corsica. Oh…
That pressure got real in Chile, his fourth start of the season. We were about to find out what 2001 Swedish Rally winner Harri’s boy had really learned since he started tearing up frozen lakes a decade ago. What happened? He won four on the bounce and rocketed himself back into contention. A couple more rallies on, and a world title was delivered for the only-just-19-year-old on Rally GB. Rovanpera made mistakes this year, but he’s the real deal and he’s ready for the step up to the big time that awaits him in 2020.
What of the rest of the WRC 2 Pro field? M-sport’s Gus Greensmith scored a superb seventh overall to start his season in sensational fashion on the Monte. The rest of the year didn’t quite live up to that billing, save for an incredible Rally Turkey victory – the first WRC success for the Fiesta R5 MKII, which came despite rolling after the penultimate stage.
Greensmith narrowly missed out on second place in WRC 2 Pro, which was taken by Citroen driver Mads Ostberg.
But, quite frankly, who was winning that class was pretty much anybody’s guess for much of the year. All too often the supposedly amateur end of the R5 offering – WRC 2 – was besting WRC 2 Pro in the overall classification, leaving onlookers bemused at best and thoroughly confused at worst. Fortunately, the FIA is working to deliver a marginally more elegant solution for 2020.
Back-to-back wins in Portugal and Sardinia laid the foundations for Pierre-louis
Loubet to lift the WRC 2 title in his Skoda.
The Solans household celebrated a second JWRC title (the class is a one-make series for Ford Fiesta R2s) in three years, as Jan followed in the footsteps of older brother Nil to drive away the prize – a brand-new Fiesta R5 – at the end of the season. Spanish star Solans Jr and Swede Tom Kristensson were the class of the field and shared two wins apiece in the five-round series.
A double-points finale meant practically everybody stood a mathematical chance of clinching the Junior title in Wales, but ultimately it was Solans who delivered the precision and pace required.