The reigning WRC constructors’ champions have announced new contracts with Rovanpera, Elfyn Evans, Sebastien Ogier and Takamoto Katsuta following Toyota’s dominant 1-2-3 at last weekend’s season finale in Japan. Rovanpera, Evans and Ogier each scored three wins this year to help Toyota to a sixth world title.
Evans, runner-up to Rovanpera in his year’s title race, will contest a full season alongside Katsuta, while eight-time world champion Ogier is set for a third partial campaign after retiring from full-time competition at the end of 2021.
Newly crowned two-time world champion Rovanpera has signed a new multi-year deal but will only contest a part-time programme in 2024.
Rovanpera wishes to “recharge his batteries” from the demands of the WRC next year before returning for a full-time programme in 2025.
The 23-year-old made the step up to WRC’s top flight in 2020 with Toyota and has since scored 11 wins on his way to back-to-back world titles in 2022-2023. This year he became only the sixth driver in WRC history to defend the world title.
“I am really excited to have signed a multi-year contract with TGR-WRT and to continue working with the team,” said Rovanpera, whose exact 2024 schedule is yet to be defined.
“Next year I am only going to be driving some of the events and the biggest reason for this is that I have been driving rally cars for 15 years already, which is quite a long time, and while the last seasons have been amazing of course, they have also been really demanding mentally and physically.
“So I felt that now would be a good moment to take a year for recharging the batteries, and then come back again full-time to fight for the championship once more with a full attack.”
Source: Autosport