Kalle Rovanpera admits that it was finally a good idea to come at Rally Poland and believes that everything paid off in the end considering the fact that Toyota confirmed his entry just two days before the start of the rally.
The two-time WRC Champion accepted Toyota's call to replace Sebastien Ogier who was forced to miss Rally Poland after the recce accident he had six days ago. The Japanese team was looking for its options ahead of Rally Poland and eventually confirmed that Rovanpera and Jonne Halttunen will drive the third Yaris in Poland. The Finns spent many hours of preparing for this event since they had not had their pacenotes ready and had not watched on-board videos for their preparation, but the most important is that Elfyn Evans, Ogier and Takamoto Katsuta had the chance to test the car before the start of Rally Poland compared to them who did not have this opportunity. Rovanpera was fighting with Andreas Mikkelsen and Elfyn Evans for the lead on Friday and on Saturday morning since the time that Evans suffered from a puncture in Stage 13, thus only two remained alive for the win. However, a rear-right puncture stroke Mikkelsen on the opening stage of Sunday, as he was using the banks, and his i20N had a cosmetic damage which means that Rovanpera was able to control his lead until the end of Rally Poland. His weekend was perfect as he stayed out of trouble and took eight stage wins resulting in securing his second victory of the season after the two crashes he had in Sweden and Portugal.
"It has been an amazing week and quite a tough week: we have been working hard and I feel quite tired now!", Rovanpera said.
"With the limited preparation we had, it was not so easy on this kind of fast rally where you need to keep pushing.
"I think we did everything we could, working all the time with the tight schedule that we had and keeping to our plan on the stages, and it all paid off in the end.
"Sunday was still an important day with many kilometres and technical stages.
"We tried to keep the pace we had on Saturday, be safe enough to bring home the win but also grab some more points.
"At the finish we managed to bring quite a lot of points for the team, which was the aim for us when we got the call from the team on Tuesday, so I think it was a good idea to come!".
Photo Credits: Red Bull Content Pool
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