The Finnish Star Kalle Rovanperä wins Rally Poland

The reigning world champion Kalle Rovanperä wins the 2024 80th ORLEN Rally Poland, a rally that he wasn’t meant to drive. The Finn received an urgent call on Tuesday to sit in for the eight-time champion Sébastien Ogier.

Toyota Gazoo Racing announced on Tuesday afternoon that Ogier was involved in a head-on collision with another car during the pre-event recce resulting in the Frenchman withdrawing from the event followed by his injuries. Instead, Rovanperä and co-driver Jonne Halttunen were selected to drive the third Toyota.

Before the rally, it was speculated that Rovanperä had no realistic chances of winning in Poland. Without proper preparation and testing, he has only done the recce ahead of the event, Rovanperä started the rally and was right up to speed already on Friday but then on Saturday he took over the lead of the rally which he held on to the finish line on Sunday afternoon.

The Finn secured the win with a 28.3-second margin over his teammate Elfyn Evans who ended up in second. Adrien Fourmaux managed to put his M-Sport Ford WRT ran Ford Puma Rally1 on the podium as well, the current championship leader Thierry Neuville was the best Hyundai Shell Mobis WRT driver in fourth meanwhile the Rally1 debutant Mārtiņš Sesks took an impressive fifth place in the first-ever non-hybrid Ford Puma Rally1 machine.

Andreas Mikkelsen led the rally on Friday and was second at the end of Saturday, On Sunday morning, Mikkelsen suffered a puncture, after which he drove cautiously through the stages, ultimately finishing sixth. Grégoire Munster took seventh place for M-Sport, rounding up the Rally1 machines in the top 10 was Toyota’s Takamoto Katsuta in eight.

Hyundai’s Ott Tänak was forced to retire immediately on Friday morning already on the first stage after colliding with a deer. Tänak did re-join the rally on the Saturday morning loop but the team decided to retire the car for the afternoon stages to focus on collecting points on Super Sunday instead where he was the fastest and managed to secure 11 points in total.

Sami Pajari won the WRC2 class and came ninth overall, he was 22 seconds up on Oliver Solberg who took second place in the class and tenth overall, and Robert Virves rounded up the WRC2 podium finishers.

Top 10 overall results: