Winner of the New Zealand rally, his sixth this season, Kalle Rovanperä won the day after his 22nd birthday ahead of the two previous world champions, Sébastien Ogier, eight times titled in nine seasons, between 2013 and 2021, and Ott Tänak, crowned in 2019. Thanks to the five bonus points of the final Power Stage, which he left to no one and especially not to Tänak, the Finn now has a 64-point lead over the Estonian and can no longer be caught up, two rounds from the end of the season (Spain, Japan).
The son of Harri Rovanperä - who had won a single round of the WRC, Rally Sweden in 2001, with Peugeot, a few months after Kalle's birth - got to know the wheel at a very young age.
As a child, his father already took him to drive, sitting on his knees.
“
He was my first teacher.
He taught me that the car had a steering wheel, an accelerator and a clutch, then told me to get started
,” his son said in an interview on the Red Bull website.
On YouTube, there are videos - which have gone viral - of the blue-eyed blond driving, on the snow or in the forest, at just eight years old.
By way of comparison, for lack of means, Ogier only discovered the discipline at the age of 22.
An apprenticeship in Latvia
Ready to run to the gates of adolescence, the young Kalle however comes up against a major obstacle: Finnish law, which does not allow him to drive.
Let's go to Latvia, where a driving license is not required to take part in car races, provided that the adult co-driver takes the wheel during the liaisons on the road, between two special stages.
On the other side of the Baltic, the native of Jyväskylä, epicenter of the mythical Rally Finland, quickly asserted himself and won three consecutive titles in the Latvian championship, from 2015 to 2017. This is the first record for early a long list.
The youngest driver to score points in the World Championship (Australia 2017, from his second rally at this level), he was also the youngest to stand on a WRC podium (Sweden 2020), the youngest leader of a event, in Estonia the same year, and the youngest leader in the driver standings after the 2021 Arctic Rally in Finland.
At 20, he especially became in Estonia, on the lands of Tänak, the youngest winner of a WRC round, thus dethroning his compatriot Jari-Matti Latvala... who is now his boss, at Toyota.
Even the license, the Finnish prodigy got it hands down before everyone else!
On October 2, 2017, the day after his 17th birthday, Rovanperä passed his driving test, as Finnish authorities allowed him to take the test a year early.
The Max Verstappen of rallying
By his precocity, Rovanperä is often compared to the Dutchman Max Verstappen.
The reigning Formula 1 world champion, who went through Red Bull's driver development programme, made his debut in motorsport's premier class in 2015 aged 17, before winning his first Grand Prix in 2016 aged 18. years, records never equaled to date.
This comparison, "
I've heard it before and I think it's rather flattering
," said the Finn, linked to Red Bull since he was 16.
And like Verstappen, three years his senior, Rovanperä can now boast of a world title, like his illustrious compatriot Marcus Grönholm in 2002.
Finally, another early record, the most significant: Rovanperä is the youngest world rally champion, a title created 50 years ago.
Briton Colin McRae, who died in a helicopter crash in 2007, was 27 when he was crowned in 1995.
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