Why Rovanpera's Poland win will be remembered as one of his great WRC drives

Kalle Rovanpera has won a World Rally Championship event he wasn’t even entered for. From his mad dash to stand-in for Sebastien Ogier to falling asleep watching onboards, here’s how the Finn became a supersub superstar at Rally Poland

Kalle Rovanpera has rewritten the World Rally Championship record books in becoming the youngest event winner, world champion and back-to-back title winner, and now he’s won a rally he wasn’t even supposed to contest. Is there anything the flying Finn can’t do in a rally car?

It’s a valid question, because Rovanpera and co-driver Jonne Halttunen defied the odds to take victory in Poland after receiving a last-minute call up to act as the perfect supersub for Toyota in its hour of need.

In this article

Tom Howard

WRC

Kalle Rovanperä

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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.