How mature Rovanpera played the bigger picture to join the WRC's greats

A crash for his World Rally Championship title rival Elfyn Evans on Saturday's leg of the new Central European Rally prompted Kalle Rovanpera to take an altogether different approach to the remainder of the three-country event. Allowing Thierry Neuville to push on for the win, Rovanpera backed off to finish second and secure back-to-back championships with a round to spare

Updated Oct 31, 2023, 10:12 AM

Sebastien Loeb, Sebastien Ogier, Juha Kankkunen, Miki Biasion, Tommi Makinen and now Kalle Rovanpera all have something in common – they're the World Rally Championship's only back-to-back champions. This is the latest exclusive club 23-year-old Rovanpera can now call himself a signed up member of after sealing a second consecutive world title at the inaugural Central European Rally.

"It sounds quite good – it is clear that it is not so easy to do it back-to-back," said Rovanpera upon finding out which new club he'd joined in Germany.

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Author Tom Howard

Tom Howard is a News Editor working across both Autosport.com and Motorsport.com websites. Starting out as a sports reporter in local newspapers, Tom focussed on motorsport covering several national championships in the UK, including the BTCC.

After a period working as a freelance journalist, Tom moved to Australia in 2013 landing a job at leading Australian motorsport news outlet speedcafe.com, covering international motorsport events including F1, WRC and Supercars. Progressing to Editor in 2017, Tom was named Motorsport Australia Journalist of the Year for his work. He is also a two-time winner of Supercars Journalist of The Year (2017,2019) and a Supercars Championship Media Award winner in 2019.

Tom moved back to his native UK in 2020, firstly working in BTCC, before joining Autosport and motorsport.com in 2021.