Kovalainen: Rallying was the passion from the beginning

The Finn is perhaps best known for his achievements within the racing scene after a six-year stint in Formula 1, which delivered four podiums and a sole victory at the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix.

However, as a young boy growing up in Suomussalmi in northern Finland, Kovalainen was more interested in the world of rallying.

“It could well have been that the path I was heading for was rallying because [as a child], I was really more interested in rallying and wasn’t following Formula 1 until the early nineties when Häkkinen joined McLaren,” Kovalainen told Becs Williams in the latest WRC Backstories podcast.

“Rallying was the passion from the very beginning for me - I have always followed what’s been going on in the rally world. Although my career went to the racing side, my passion has always been there.”

While Kovalainen’s career journey took him to the heights of Formula 1, it wasn’t until 2016, while competing in the Super GT racing series in Japan, that he had a chance to properly scratch his rallying itch.

“In Japan, it was quite usual that the drivers who were doing the GT series were also doing the Super Formula series because they complement each other quite well,” he explained. “Sometimes in the GT calendar, we’d have six or seven weeks of doing nothing. There were testing restrictions as well, so there were quite big gaps between races, and I felt at some point that they were too big, and I needed to be doing something.

“I wasn’t really keen on Super Formula – that’s more for junior drivers who are working their way up to Formula 1 – so I started to talk to these guys at my team about whether there was anything I could do in Japan. I actually said, ‘How about some rallying in Japan?’ I didn’t know much about the rallying scene in Japan, but my team boss knew the team boss of Luck Rally Team, the grandfather [of Takamoto] Katsuta, so they got in contact.

“Katsuta senior offered me an opportunity to come and drive one of their Toyota GT86 rally cars and join a rally. They found me a co-driver who could speak English, and that’s how it all started. It was literally just trying to fill the gaps in the GT calendar, to keep my eye in and do something that I have always had a passion for. As soon as I started doing it, I realised it was something that was really fun and interesting. It became clear in my head that I’d like to do this more in the future if I got the opportunity.”

Kovalainen would go on to become a regular feature at regional rallies and, after upgrading to a Škoda Fabia R5, won back-to-back Japanese Rally Championship titles in 2022 and 2023. On his WRC debut at FORUM8 Rally Japan in 2022, he and co-driver Sae Kitagawa placed 10th overall and fourth in WRC2.

The 42-year-old can thank Esapekka Lappi, Hyundai Motorsport star and winner of this year’s Rally Sweden, for some of that success.

“Lappi has been one of the guys who has given me some good ideas, especially when I moved from a two-wheel drive to a four-wheel drive car,” he revealed. “I was driving the rear-wheel drive GT86 for quite a few years, but then at some point, obviously, there was a time when I needed a four-wheel drive car. We actually got one of Esapekka’s old cars as our first car there, a 2015 Škoda Fabia.

“I started to talk to Esapekka a little bit about it because we had some set-up issues and couldn’t get it balanced very well. He gave us some ideas in terms of the set-up and driving as well. His co-driver [Janne Ferm] is very funny, but he is a super professional co-driver. He’s got some good ideas about the pace notes as well, so that is probably the crew that I’ve talked to the most."