ROVANPERA AND TOYOTA TO STRIKE BACK
World Rally Championship leader Kalle Rovanpera vowed to come back stronger in New Zealand after admitting his Acropolis Rally was one of the worst of his career.
The Finn faced the second match point of his quest to become the youngest ever World Rally champion if he could outscore Tanak by 18 points in Greece. However, for the second event in a row, after his spectacular Belgium crash, the magic he has sprinkled at almost every round this season appeared to have dried up. Hampered by opening the roads on Friday, and a crash on Saturday, Rovanpera didn’t leave Greece empty handed, claiming four powerstage points that could be vital.
“Of course, I have done many good and bad weekends but this is one of the worst ones,” said Rovanpera. “It was a bad weekend for me and bad weekend for the team also, so we need to improve and be stronger for the next one.
“It has been a long and tough weekend, more difficult than we expected and not what we wanted. At least we were able to get some points in the powerstage. We tried to do our best in the powerstage. It wasn’t easy, I had to push everywhere, including in the rough parts, but we managed to get some good points so the situation isn’t so bad for the championship. Now we need to concentrate on the next one and come back much stronger.”
After witnessing his four-car attack struggle for pace in Greece, Toyota boss Jari-matti Latvala added: “It has been a very difficult weekend for us and our overall results are not good. There has been a combination of many factors contributing to those results and we have to learn from this weekend about why things went wrong and we must improve for the future.
“Elfyn’s [Evans] retirement was a particularly disappointing way to start the final day and we are already investigating what happened. The good thing is that we got Kalle and Esapekka [Lappi] to the finish with some really helpful points towards the manufacturers’ championship.”