Roope Korhonen has been a busy boy, spending just five days at home in the last seven weeks
Photography by Red Bull & Toyota
Words by Luke Barry
This weekend will be something of a relief. To wake up in his own bed, to be free of any stresses or pressure.
When your life is geared towards making it as a professional rally driver in the World Rally Championship, rally driving is all you want to do – during the week and on the weekend.
But when you’ve spent six of the last seven weeks travelling Europe, switching teams, switching tire suppliers and constantly going rallying, a little breather doesn’t go amiss.
Welcome to Roope Korhonen’s world.
Since the start of Rali Terras d’Aboboreira in May to the beginning of this week, mid-way through June, the young Finn spent five days at home. The rest? He was out rallying.
“Yeah, I’m ready for a rest!” Korhonen tells DirtFish.
“But of course I think it’s good for my career. A lot of new rallies for us also – new stages, new pacenotes, so really good practice and learning.”
Korhonen has only slept in his own bed for five nights in almost two months!
Korhonen’s six rallies in seven weekends were as follows: Rali Terras d’Aboboreira, Rally Hungary (ERC), Rally Portugal (WRC2), one-week gap, Royal Rally of Scandinavia (ERC), Rally Italy Sardinia (WRC2) and Rally Poland (ERC).
All, mercifully, were on gravel and behind the wheel of a Toyota GR Yaris Rally2, but the team running the car (Step Five Motorsport in WRC, SRT in ERC) and the tires he was using (Hankook in WRC, MRF in ERC) differed – and he obviously didn’t benefit from the usual preparation time drivers tend to take from rallies at European or world level.
But as he said, this intense experience is a brilliant way to accelerate his learning. After all, being adaptable is key in rallying.
“Yeah, of course you can’t prepare each rally so good or maybe how you want,” Korhonen says.
“So I think it’s one minus thing.
“But yeah, of course it helps when you can get so much seat time in a rally car. You get a good rhythm.
“However when you change the tires, you always need to adjust the car also and make some small setup changes and learn what is the grip with these tires. So it takes a bit of time [to adjust] when you jump between.”
The style of rallies were different too – the most noticeable jump happening recently when Korhonen flew from the slow, rocky roads of Sardinia to the flat-out tracks in Poland.
“When you drive in Sardinia where stages are really slow and narrow and then you go to Poland where you have to push flat out all the time, I struggle a bit with pacenotes between these rallies,” Korhonen explains. “So it can be one thing.”
However he didn’t necessarily feel that doing so many rallies back-to-back was a hindrance.
“Difficult to say,” he says. “[But for example] we went straight to Portugal after winning Hungary on Sunday because the recce for Portugal started on Monday morning. So it was quite tough.”
The results he collected were strong across the board, though. The last two events (Sardinia and Poland) featured accidents but the speed was strong, setting him up well for the future.
We asked Roope to rank the six rallies he’s completed in a seven-week span, and this was his reckoning:
Result: 18th WRC2
The second of his WRC events in this period, Korhonen was 10th in class after the opening stage before he crashed on the second – the same test that eliminated three M-Sport Pumas.
“Yeah, it was horrible,” Korhonen says. “But luckily the team did a really good job and fixed the car and we could continue the rally.
“After that the pace was quite good – much better than what I expected before the rally because we were there only once before in a Rally3 car, so quite a new rally for us.”
Result: DNF
So much of Rally Poland was good.
At an event where Mãrtiņš Sesks was a clear best, Korhonen was a clear second-best; only to be caught out on the first stage of Sunday morning.
“I think I was a bit too fast and maybe took a bit the wrong line to the corner. and we went a bit wide and then came back to the road but we hit the tree which was in the opposite side of the road.
“Normally there, if you drive a bit too fast into the corner, there is usually some bank that you can use, but now there was some small ditch.”
Result: 4th overall
The first of this sequence of events and by far the one that flew under the radar most, as it wasn’t in the WRC or ERC.
Like many others, Korhonen used the Portuguese championship event as a warm-up for the world championship round a fortnight later and acquitted himself well – finishing as top Hankook (and non Portuguese championship runner) in fourth.
The best barometer for his performance was the 19.2s advantage he enjoyed over WRC2 rival, and current championship leader, Yohan Rossel before the Frenchman elected to withdraw from the event results.
Result: 4th WRC2
Building on what he achieved in Aboboreira, Korhonen slotted in a creditable fourth at WRC Rally Portugal – behind three drivers with vastly more experience.
“I think it was a good result for us because WRC2 is really competitive now and there is a lot of fast guys,” he reflects.
“And, yeah, there is almost can you say manufacturer drivers [who finished ahead of us]? Like Oliver [Solberg] and Rossel and [Gus] Greensmith, so that’s really encouraging.”
Result: 2nd overall (ERC)
An epic second day in particular thrust Korhonen into contention to the point where he almost stole victory, eventually setting for second.
He had been as low as eighth to begin with.
“We did a mistake in our test,” the 26-year-old reveals. “We had the wrong diffs for our car and we struggled a lot on Friday with that.
“But yeah, we changed the diffs back and then everything goes much better. We catch up [Isak] Reiersen on the final stage and took second.”
Result: 1st overall (ERC)
A first international rally win was always going to rank top of this list. And what a performance it was on his ERC debut no less.
“Yeah, it was a really, really good rally for us,” admits Korhonen. “It’s really good for Toyota cars too because it’s quite a rough rally and also with the MRF tires it was really suitable for this.”
At the time of writing, Korhonen’s next event is up in the air.
It’ll either be Rally Estonia (July 17-20) in the WRC, or Rally di Roma Capitale (July 4-6) in the ERC depending on if the required support has been garnered for the latter.
The Finn is working hard to complete the ERC season – not least because he has a strong championship position (third despite missing a round), but also because he identifies Tarmac as an area to improve and all four remaining rounds are on that surface.
Korhonen is keen to continue in the ERC
“It would be really nice to continue the ERC season,” he says.
“I think the main thing is that these Tarmac events are really good learning because I don’t have so many rallies on Tarmac. So that is a really, really good thing for me.
“And of course, we are now in quite a good situation in the championship so everything is possible for that.”
But Korhonen’s immediate focus is on a classic dose of R&R.
“Now I have a bit of a holiday,” he smiles, “celebrating Finnish midsummer in rainy Finland!”
Words:Luke Barry
Tags: ERC, ERC 2025, Roope Korhonen, WRC, WRC 2025, WRC2, WRC2 2025
Publish Date June 20, 2025 DirtFish
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