Kalle Rovanpera (above) was in a league of his own as he led a Toyota 1-2-3-4-5 sweep through Friday’s opening leg of the FIA World Rally Championship’s all-asphalt Rally Islas Canarias.
The Finn, alongside co-driver Jonne Halttunen, topped the timesheets on all six of the day’s special stages to build a commanding lead of 26.8s in his Toyota GR Yaris Rally1. Adding to the Japanese marque’s domination, all five Toyota Gazoo Racing factory entries packed the top of the leaderboard, well ahead of their floundering rivals from Hyundai Motorsport and M-Sport Ford.
Rovanpera’s return to form could not have been better timed. After opting for a part-time WRC program in 2024, a subdued start to the season on his full-time return had left the two-time WRC champ 57 points adrift of the title lead coming into this fourth round – but that gap could start to shrink if his domination continues into the weekend.
While others battled with car setup and tire management, Rovanpera appeared right at home on the narrow, technical roads that wound high into Gran Canaria’s mountains – roads that were lined with fans eager to witness the Canary Islands’ first-ever WRC appearance.
An interrupted rhythm caused by understeer in the morning’s third stage – which he still won anyway – was the only blemish on an otherwise perfect day for the 24-year-old Rovanpera. He’s joined on the provisional podium by eight-time WRC champ Sebastien Ogier and current points leader Elfyn Evans, with Sami Pajari and Takamoto Katsuta completing Toyota’s clean sweep in fourth and fifth respectively.
“It feels quite good,” said Rovanpera, who dovetailed his part-time 2024 WRC campaign with a Porsche Carrera Cup Benelux program and might well be reaping the benefits from that dip into circuit racing. “It’s surprisingly nice to have this kind of rally – we haven’t had it in a long time. Now hopefully we know for tomorrow what to do with the car. We tested some small things here, so it should be quite OK.”
Ogier and Evans were closely matched in the battle for second, but once the former dialed in his tire pressures after the opening stage, he gained the upper hand – reaching the overnight halt in Las Palmas 9.6s clear of his Welsh teammate.
Pajari, making only his second pure asphalt outing in a Rally1 car, delivered a string of top-four stage times to end Friday just 18.9s behind Evans. Katsuta, whose confidence and commitment visibly grew as the day wore on, was a further 10.7s back after passing Hyundai’s Adrien Fourmaux on the day’s penultimate stage to snatch fifth.
It was a frustrating day for Fourmaux and for the Hyundai team as a whole, with the Frenchman falling to eighth on the final stage behind his colleagues, Thierry Neuville and Ott Tanak. All three struggled to extract performance from the hard compound Hankook Ventus Z215 tires on their i20 N Rally1 machines, with setup issues leaving them more than a minute adrift of the lead and searching for solutions overnight.