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Becoming a WRC driver: 8 insider tips from world champion Kalle Rovanperä
The World Rally Championship is where skilled and versatile drivers compete on different surfaces in sprints and trials. We asked Kalle Rovanperä about how to become a pro.
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When it comes to the World Rally Championship, Sébastien Ogier is the undisputed legend of the sport. “I love rally because of the diversity of the sport," says the eight-time world champion. "We are racing all over the world on lots of different surfaces – we are driving on gravel, on Tarmac, on snow. We always have to adapt and face very different situations.
“You need to have a lot of skills of adaptation because we are always facing the unknown – we are never quite sure what’s going to happen around the next corner.”
So what makes a great rally driver and how do you get there? We asked Kalle Rovanperä, the current and youngest-ever world champion for his guide on how to become a professional WRC driver.
01
What makes a great rally driver?
“There are many things you need but the most important is the talent to drive the car fast – that's pretty vital,” says Rovanperä.
Tip 1 – the right temperament is vital. “Next on the list is you need to be mentally strong," says Rovanperä. "You need to have a huge will to win and never give up. Every champion is pushed forward by this crazy desire to beat everybody else.
“You also need to be calm mentally so that you are able to handle all the situations and handle the pressure that’s on you and not make mistakes. I would say my biggest assets are my driving skill combined with the calmness of my personality.”
Good signs: World Rally Championship star Kalle Rovanperä
© Jaanus Ree/Red Bull Content Pool
02
It’s never too early to get started
Rally drivers race over asphalt, gravel and snow, day and night and in temperatures ranging from 42°C to -25°C at speeds north of 180kph. It takes years to build the car control needed to race in the continually changing conditions of World Rally.
Part of the reason why Rovanperä’s record is so remarkable is that, at 22, he is the youngest world champion by five years, taking the title from the legendary Colin McRae. That’s because he started very young. From the age of three, he was riding buggies and mini motorbikes. By the age of six, he’d learned to drive and by the age of eight, he was racing around the forests of Finland on test roads in cars that had been adapted so he could reach the pedals.
Tip 2 – work hard and think for yourself. "I drove a lot of different cars in a lot of different conditions," says Rovanperä. "I never really had any coaching so most of the time I just got behind the wheel and figured it out for myself."
By the age of 12, he was competing against seasoned drivers in the Latvian Rally Championship.
Kalle Rovanperä in action at Rally Belgium
© Jaanus Ree/Red Bull Content Pool
03
Starting young is good, but age is no barrier
Rally drivers are like a fine wine and most need to mature a little to reach their best, and it’s a sport where you can still compete long after F1 drivers or MotoGP riders have hung up their gloves.
The WRC Masters Cup is part of the WRC calendar and is for drivers aged 50 and above. Some of the absolute greats were relative late-comers, such as Sébastien Loeb, who was a gymnast before turning a wheel in rally. Carlos Sainz tried out for Real Madrid football team and became Spanish squash champion before hitting the dirt and Sébastien Ogier was a ski instructor. Ogier was 22 – the same age as the new world champion – before he even started rallying professionally.
“My childhood dream was to become a racing driver for sure, but it was really looking like an unreachable dream for me (because) I was coming from a very modest area,” Ogier told CNN. “My parents did their best but motorsport was obviously impossible to [break into] because it was too expensive.”
But they could stretch to a cross-kart for the young Ogier. Weighing just 312kg and powered by a 750cc engine, the lightweight ATV buggies are fast and torquey with a strong suspension and ideal for honing rallying skills over an array of surfaces.
Rally winner Mikko Hirvonen holds the current indoor speed record of 140kph in a cross-kart. He and Belgian Thierry Neuville even have cross-kart dealerships in their homelands.
Tip 3 – enjoy yourself. "You have to start with the passion to do it," says Rovanperä. "You have to drive as much as you can and you need to have fun when you’re doing it because that way you’ll learn much more.
"It's important to enjoy what you do. When you start out in sport it’s a hobby and you feel very passionate about it, but you have to work really hard to reach the highest level. It feels like a job and you need to treat it as a job if you want to score good results. But it's important that you still enjoy it as much as possible."
Kalle Rovanperä driving through heat and dust at Rally Mexico
© Jaanus Ree/Red Bull Content Pool
04
A driving license is crucial
In F1, drivers need a super licence before they can race but anyone with a driving permit can compete in WRC – provided they have the skills to be approved by the FIA. But while rallying is more accessible, the stages are not: they take place on stretches of public roads.
Rovanperä started competing in Latvia – as opposed to his native Finland – because it’s one of the few European championships where you can race without a licence. But he and his team had to work within the rules, so his co-driver Risto Pietiläinen took the wheel between stages.
Tip 4 – getting your licence is essential, even if it’s a formality.
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Kalle Rovanperä takes his driving test
Watch how the 17-year-old rally driver gets his driving license.
Many drivers including Ogier worked as mechanics during the week to support their rally hobby and all know how to fix their vehicles. If the car shreds a tyre on a rock, breaks the suspension on a jump or crunches the body on a barrier, the driver and co-driver need to be able to fix the damage and continue rallying or return to the service park. So every driver has good mechanical knowledge of fixing the car – a tyre change takes about two minutes.
05
Learn from the best
Rovanperä grew up in the perfect environment for an aspiring young rally driver. His father Harri competed in the WRC, racing against greats like Carlos Sainz, McRae and Marcus Grönholm. It instilled a love of the sport in young Rovanperä and Harri was happy to act as mentor, teacher and chief mechanic.
"He was also my first teacher," says Rovanperä. "He taught me that the car had a steering wheel, an accelerator and a clutch, and then told me to get on with it."
Pietiläinen had been Harri’s co-driver in competition, which meant young Kalle had a wealth of experience to learn from. But he still had to put in the time to develop his skills.
Tip 5 – get as much advice and guidance as you can, but do what works for you. “When someone offers you some advice, always listen to them," says Rovanperä. "But if what they say doesn't work for you, you also need to understand that it’s OK to follow your instincts.”
Celebrating his first victory of 2023 at Rally Portugal
© Jaanus Ree/Red Bull Content Pool
06
Join racing clubs and race competitions
At the age of 15, Rovanperä drove his Rovanperä Racing Citroën C2 R2 Max to the R2 championship in Latvia. The following year, he graduated to the R5 championship in a more powerful Škoda Fabia R5, and became the world’s youngest-ever national rally champion. His record was so exceptional that Rovanperä could get special dispensation to also compete in the Italian Rally Championship and at home, where he won two rallies in the Finnish championship.
He retained the title in 2017 and passed his driving test in October of that year. Within weeks, he made his WRC2 debut with M-Sport at Rally GB. In the next round, the final rally of the season in Australia, Rovanperä became the youngest driver to win a round in the WRC2.
07
Train in various racing disciplines
Rallying is all about manoeuvring quickly and precisely over a variety of terrains, and you can build those driving skills in a variety of different sports. Scandinavia has a great car culture, and especially Finland. Riding a snowmobile is a great way to enjoy the long winter and the muddy terrain in spring is perfect for buggies and MX bikes. The slippery gravel back roads are ideal for learning how to adjust to different levels of grip. Folk races – or Jokkis – provide fun off-road racing on a micro-budget. And on a Saturday night, a lot of young Finns will cruise into town to show off their wheels.
Kalle Rovanperä taking part in Formula Drift in Ebisu, Japan
© Kunihisa Kobayashi/Red Bull Content Pool
Tip 6 – use drifting as a way of relaxing. “It’s the way we drive the cars: sideways and really fast. Driving a car sideways is the most fun way of driving," says Rovanperä. "It’s even more fun than rally driving. I enjoy any kind of drifting, whether it’s in competition or not.”
Last year, he turned his hand to competitive drift racing at the Irish round of Drift Masters European Championship at Mondello Park in Dublin. This year he made his debut in Formula Drift in Japan, and he’ll be racing in four rounds of DMEC.
“The spirit and the atmosphere is very open and there’s a friendly feeling between the drivers and teams," says Rovanperä. "Most people are happy to help each other if needed so it’s very dissimilar to WRC. There it’s much more cutthroat but in drifting, if someone’s car breaks down, you might well see the guy he’s racing helping him out by giving him some parts. It's really just a big, big family.”
Kalle Rovanperä in action at Rally Finland
© Jaanus Ree/Red Bull Content Pool
08
Impress the service park with your skills and build relationships
In 2009, a YouTube clip of eight-year-old Kalle Rovanerä racing in the snow in Finland went viral in rallying circles, being shared across the media centres and garages of the WRC. Team bosses and sponsors were monitoring him.
But some service park insiders didn’t need to look too far: Rovanperä’s father put in a call to his driver manager Timo Jouhki, who had steered the careers of four-time champions Tomi Mäkinen and Juha Kankkunen. Timo signed Rovanperä at the age of 16 and had the connections and know-how to take his career to the next level. It was also Jouhki who signed Rovanperä to Toyota Gazoo Racing, the team that brought him in to WRC.
09
Practise on different terrains and conditions
Being surrounded by the best helps you to raise your game on track and make the connections that will help you climb the career ladder. If you don’t happen to live in central Finland, don’t worry because rallying is a global sport. One of the most competitive championships is the BRC in the UK, which takes drivers around England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and into Belgium with drivers competing on a ratio of 1:2 km of gravel:asphalt stages. Outside Europe, New Zealand boasts some of the best roads in rallying and has produced WRC stars like Possum Bourne and Hayden Paddon.
In France, motor racing is a big deal and French drivers Loeb and Ogier dominated two decades of WRC. Ogier learned his craft in Gap, near the start of the Rally Monte Carlo. He used to be a volunteer fire marshal at the Monaco F1 Grand Prix, which helped him make connections. His big break came in 2005, when he won the Rallye Jeunes, a contest run by the French Motorsport Federation (FFSA). It earned him the backing to go racing and he rewarded their faith by winning the Peugeot 206 Cup in 2007 alongside co-driver Julien Ingrassia. From there. he was able to make the step into WRC’s junior series with Citroën.
10
It's about more than controlling a car
Forging a solid partnership with your co-driver is vital to WRC success. The surface that you race along is constantly changing and the skilled rally driver adjusts his approach to match the conditions. You can familiarise yourself with the stage during the recce phase when you and your co-driver compile pace notes, mapping every twist and turn of the route. Good communication is essential: the driver needs to help the co-driver write the notes and trust the co-driver’s instructions when the heat is on during the stage.
When F1 Grand Prix winner Robert Kubica began rallying, he complained how hard it is to learn the stages. “In circuit racing, if you make a mistake, you can come back and drive this circuit again,” he said. “In rallying, if you go off the road, you don't see the place again for another year. And when you come back, the condition of the road and the corner can change completely. So much of rallying comes down to experience."
Kalle Rovanperä at Rally Liepaja in Latvia in 2017
© @World/Red Bull Content Pool
Harri Rovanperä’s co-driver Hristo Pietiläinen was able to keep pace with Kalle at the start of his career. But in 2017, it became clear he needed someone younger at his side. That was Jonne Halttunen, who is 15 years older than Kalle but, having been co-driving at a high level since 2011, his experience is on a par with his driver.
11
Keeping fit and mentally prepared
At 22 years old, Rovanperä is at peak physical condition. But it’s important that he also enjoys his free time away from the service park. “I do lots of different exercises to give me good overall fitness," he says. "I do strength training to help me to drive and concentrate on the long rally stages. I go running and play sports like tennis and padel to give me the stamina.”
A WRC event is six long days of hard work and intense focus: from recces and team meetings to three days of solid racing, it’s an exhausting competiton. It’s important therefore to be able to relax between rounds.
Tip 7 – keep your friends close. “I’ll spend time with my friends and what we do all depends on what's happening on my calendar and how much free time I have," says Rovanperä. "I might go drifting or even go and do a drift competition. If I have more time, I might go on a road trip and go skiing.
“I’m lucky to have some very good friends around me. I'm really thankful for that because they support me. We’ve been friends for years and even though I don’t live in Finland now, they come to visit me or come to see me at events. So I see them often and spend a lot of time together.”
Kalle Rovanperä and Jonne Halttunen
© Jaanus Ree/Red Bull Content Pool
12
Adapt first and learn how to win
The rally driver's adaptability is also important because the rally cars are used to road test new fuels and car technology, and the cars change to suit demand. Modern WRC Rally1 cars are 500bhp hybrids powered by battery and 100 percent fossil-free and renewable fuels, for example.
“We have a bit more power now but the cars are much heavier," says Rovanperä. "You can feel it straight away. It means you need to use the car a bit more: you need to be more aggressive with the steering inputs because you have more weight.
“You also need to manage the hybrid when you’re braking and accelerating, so there's a lot of differences.”
Tip 8 – learn how to win. “I think the biggest challenge is learning how to win," says Rovanperä. "The first rally victory or championship is always exciting – even a bit nerve-racking. It always gets easier the more you drive and with experience. But the first rally or championship is difficult but once you know how to win, you know how to finish the job.”
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