Hirvonen has been involved in rallying since 1998, but first demonstrated his abilities in 2002 behind the wheel of a mono-drive racing car, taking first place in the Finnish Formula 2. The same year in Italy, Mikko competed for the Subaru Cup and even took the lead in the series, but unfortunately lost the title in the last stage of the race.

After an unremarkable debut in Monte Carlo, Hirvonen spent the rest of the season flat, without much achievement. This precipitated his move to the Subaru team, with which he spent 2004, a year as quiet as the previous one. In 2005, the driver had to return to racing as a privateer, and by moving into his familiar 2003 Ford, Mikko was finally able to make a good impression, topping the standings at the Acropolis Rally. That performance put him back in the Ford factory team, and a third-place finish at the Spanish Rally guaranteed him a co-driver spot for 2006.

Facts

Hirvonen gave a lot of support to Markus Grönholm and together they were able to achieve a Ford victory in the constructors’ cup. At the same time Mikko got his first WRC win in Australia. In 2007 he had even better results, coming first in Norway, Japan and Great Britain, finishing in the top three ten times all season, as well as giving BP Ford its second team title.

At the end of the year, he finished third in the individual ranking, and in 2008, he replaced Markus Grönholm as the team’s main driver. Mikko Hirvonen is the first driver to achieve this status at such an early age. But he has rightfully taken the spot and had his most successful season to date.
Together with Jari-Matti Latvala, the team’s co-driver, Hirvonen scored three wins and was up against Sébastien Loeb himself until the penultimate stage of the competition.

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Evans initially appeared to have withdrawn due to mechanical damage from the incident, but the Welshman later explained that problems with the hybrid powertrain component were to blame. Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville, who was trailing Rovanpera by around 20 seconds all Sunday, took advantage of Evans’ exit into second place. The Belgian couldn’t close the gap to the leader, but his speed was enough to finish ahead of Esapekka Lappi, who was trailing. Lappi himself was four seconds behind Neuville before the last stage, but he couldn’t catch up with his rival.

The other Hyundai driver was much less fortunate than Neuville. Ott Tänak dropped out of the race on Friday: his car had essentially the same thing that happened to Evans’ car, namely a failure of the hybrid component. As a result, the Estonian finished outside the top ten. But nonetheless he managed to win the power stage and get 5 points for it. M-Sport driver Adrien Furmo couldn’t make it to Sunday’s first special because of the problems he had on the road section. Most likely, like on Saturday, it was the loss of engine power. The best of M-Sport was Gus Greensmith, who finished the Rally Sweden in fifth place.

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Meanwhile, two potential contenders for the title in WRC-2 Open were finally eliminated. Firstly, it is the Frenchman Yoan Rossel, who managed to lose the third position because of the “roof” on the final Power Stage and lost all chances for the crown (if he had arrived without incident, he could have become a vice-leader of the championship and a serious threat to Mikkelsen). Secondly, Nikolay Gryazin lost even theoretical chances for the final success – however, the “gesture of goodwill” in Finland, where the Russian crashed his Skoda Fabia Rally2 evo during the shakedown, helped him more. The situation is similar in the WRC-2 Junior, where only two can win the title – Finn Emil Lindholm (he has enough to take 10 points in Catalonia or Japan to become the champion) and Briton Chris Ingram (he has one more start left, but even a victory does not guarantee his overall success). Quite an interesting picture is observed in the “veteran” category of WRC-2 Masters, which unexpectedly turned out to be surprisingly popular – still we have ten crews that have started at least three rounds. The Italian Mauro Miele still retains the leadership here, but the German Armin Kremer is pressing hard on him – he has already won his third victory, moved to the third position and is now preparing for the next round in New Zealand. You can be sure that in all three categories of WRC-2 (Open, Junior, Masters) a lot will be decided in New Zealand and Catalonia – let’s see how the course of events will be.

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