Rally Islas Canaries has come to an end. Kalle Rovanperä held on to take his first win of the season, topping a strong effort by Toyota.
Morning Loop (Stages 14-16)
Kalle Rovanperä held onto the event lead after taking two stage wins during the opening loop of Super Sunday. Sebastien Ogier was the only other stage winner on the opening loop. However, Ogier’s stage win came on a 1.5 km stage. Rovanperä takes a 50.5-second lead over Ogier heading into the final two stages of the event.
Afternoon Loop (Stages 17-18)
Kalle Rovanperä took one more stage win to seal the event win. Sebastien Ogier won the other stage during the loop. Rovanperä won the Powerstage for extra points this weekend and takes home the maximum 35 points. Rovanperä ended the event with a 53.5-second lead over Ogier. Elfyn Evans finished third overall, over a minute behind Rovanperä.
Quotes
Toyota Gazoo Racing
Akio Toyoda (TGR-WRT Chairman)
“I believe that this wonderful result we achieved was made possible by the efforts of every single member of TGR-WRT. I’m so thankful to everyone. It was amazing that we could finish 1-2-3-4 with Kalle, Seb, Elfyn, and Takamoto on the roads of Gran Canaria, which we drove for the first time.
Juha, as the one with lots of experience in the Canary Islands, told everyone about the roads there and provided reassurance to the team even before the rally started. Even on unfamiliar roads, our engineers and mechanics managed to prepare the cars with setups that the drivers already felt confident with in shakedown. I heard that after Friday, the drivers expressed their appreciation to them for the great work done. We are a team where members can say thank you to each other while fighting together, and TGR-WRT always aspires to be such a team.
Thank you, everyone! Great work! This rally, in particular, was filled with everyone’s hearts. We have a busy schedule ahead leading up to Rally Finland. Let’s continue to push as one team!”
Juha Kankkunen (Deputy Team Principal)
“This kind of result doesn’t happen very often so we are very happy. Thanks to the team, everything went really well, starting from our testing and the setup. Our car was working perfectly for our drivers on these roads. It was really nice to see Kalle’s speed: it was a 10 out of 10 drive. He was driving really relaxed and clean and dominated the weekend. His performance didn’t surprise me: when he finds fifth gear, he’s really quite a fast boy. But the whole team was driving well. Seb has done two rallies this year and come first and second, Elfyn continues to do a really good job, and Taka also drove really nicely here. There are still many rallies to come and we know they will be tighter with our competition, but I’m confident in our team’s work.”
Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“It’s been a great weekend from the team with an incredible performance from the GR YARIS Rally1. A big thank you to the team who’ve done a great job understanding the challenges of this rally, preparing the car and adapting to the new tyres. A big well done to Kalle because he had pace that nobody else could match this weekend, and well done to Seb also. I’m not wholly satisified of course to have been a bit behind them and not fight for the win with equal machinery, but it’s still good points and we have to be relatively pleased with that.”
Kalle Rovanperä (Driver car 69)
“It’s been a super weekend for us and also the whole team. To get a 1-2-3-4 result like this again is quite amazing. We have just been enjoying the driving. The car has been super fast, so a big thanks to the whole team for preparing it so well. Jonne has also been doing a great job and we drove well so it’s probably one of my best wins so far. It’s not so often on this level when you can be so consistently fast through the whole weekend. To get maximum points was our goal today and we really needed that. It’s still a big gap to Elfyn but at least we are now a step closer and we keep working.”
Sébastien Ogier (Driver car 17)
“It’s an amazing result for the team to lock out the top four. It doesn’t happen every time and we need to be very happy with that. On our side, second place is not my favourite position but it’s still a good one. I think we drove a pretty good rally. I enjoyed it so much, the car was fun to drive and a big thanks to the team for giving us the best tools this weekend. Kalle and Jonne were untouchable but it’s still a very positive weekend for us, securing maximum points for the team.”
Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“I’m very proud to be part of such an amazing result for the team. A big thanks to everyone in the team for preparing the car so well. It’s been such a nice car to drive all weekend and this is why we could finish 1-2-3-4 on such a new and different rally that we haven’t been to before. On my side it would have been nice if we could have finished even higher, but it’s been a good rally for us with no big moments, and I will focus now on the next one to keep improving.”
Hyundai Shell Mobis
Adrien Fourmaux
“While there are some positives from the weekend, such as that amazing final stage and winning our inter-team battle, for sure it is not what we wanted. Sometimes in difficult rallies like this you can learn a lot and take steps forward for the future – I’m confident in the team that we can do that. We managed to take some points, which is good, but we will keep pushing to come back stronger.”
Ott Tänak
“It’s difficult to find the words to describe such a demanding weekend. I think it’s the worst we’ve been across all three crews, with none of us able to compete at the front. It is tricky when it is hot, as I get more understeer, and when the car is not working I really struggled to push. We didn’t do our homework and we weren’t prepared for this event, and Toyota set the bar very high – it was a great job
from them. ”
Thierry Neuville
“It hasn’t been a good weekend for us. We struggled a lot, and even though we were working hard to fix the situation, everything we tried didn’t seem to work. We still need to put our finger on what has caused these issues for us and come back stronger. Nevertheless, the team kept fighting despite all our struggles; we weren’t lucky with the puncture today, otherwise we might have got a reasonable result. We expected much more from this weekend, and we didn’t get it. ”
François-Xavier Demaison – Hyundai Technical Director
“Rally Islas Canarias has been a difficult rally for us. It became an intensive test session for us where we tried a lot of different things on the car. We kept pushing today but it was very tough against the four Toyotas, who were very fast. On tough weekends like this, you learn a lot of very interesting things which we believe will not only unlock performance for us on tarmac, but on gravel as well. We will now take everything we have learned from these setbacks to come back stronger at the next events. ”