The lockout was led by hometown hero Kalle Rovanpera alongside co-driver Jonne Halttunen.
It marked the first win for Rovanpera at his home event. In doing so, it ended an eight-year drought for a Finnish driver to win their home rally. The last to win it was Esapekka Lappi in 2017.
Takamoto Katsuta was second, 39.2s in arrears. Part-timer Sebastien Ogier was third and 45.1s back. Elfyn Evans (+48.1s) was fourth and Sami Pajari fifth (+1:18.8s).
“It is an amazing feeling to win Rally Finland,” said Rovanpera.
“It has been a long time coming, but with so much support from the fans every year, I feel super happy to win in front of them.
“This year everybody did a crazy amount of work to make it happen. Jonne and everybody in the team have been fantastic and we were pushing the whole weekend.
“It’s also a historical moment for Toyota to fill positions one to five, so everybody has done a great job.
“It was an intense final day on one of the most demanding stages to get right and we had to push really hard to take the points like we did.”
Rovanpera’s win was the fastest in WRC history at an average speed of 129.9 km/h, winning 10 stages along the way. With victory in the Power Stage, he claimed the full 35-point haul.
Hyundai featured early in the rally but languished by the end of Sunday. Early contenders Thierry Neuville and teammate Adrien Fourmaux both suffered punctures within minutes of each other on SS16.
They dropped from second and third respectively to sixth and seventh. Neuville had been just under 15 seconds behind Rovanpera before the puncture blew the deficit out to nearly two minutes.
The same was true for Fourmaux who was more than two minutes back. He suffered another puncture on the final stage of the rally and was forced to retire, surrendering seventh.
Neuville was the best of the non-Toyotas in sixth overall by the end of the rally. Josh McErlean was seventh for Ford ahead of his M-Sport teammates Martins Sesks and Gregoire Munster.
“We were at the front of the field for most of the weekend, but suddenly we found ourselves out of the fight and it was hard to come back from that today,” said Neuville.
“In the end, we took three points from Super Sunday, which was the maximum we could do. It’s hard when we are all giving it everything we have, but things are just not going our way.
“All we could do is have some fun in the Power Stage and look forward to the next rounds.”
Just 13 points cover the top four in the WRC standings. The title race is led by Evans on 176 points while Rovanpera is just three points behind. Ogier and Tanak share third, 10 points off the lead.
The FIA World Rally Championship continues with Rally del Paraguay on August 28-31.
Discussion about this post