Terrible salary! Account day for Kalle Rovanperä: “Completely superior”

Kalle Rovanperä will get a hefty salary increase for next season. Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT

Kalle Rovanperä’s manager Timo Jouhki says that the rally star’s contract negotiations are nearing the end.

– The big lines have been blocked. Small nuances are mostly discussed anymore. Kalle’s situation for next year is starting to be quite clear, says Jouhki.

So when will the deal be announced? It is also unclear to the rally manager.

– Teams are usually slow to announce. They want to get all the contracts together before the announcement, Jouhki explains.

In Rovanperä’s contract negotiations, all the trump cards were found in Jouhki’s hands.

– Kalle is the champion of the previous season and he leads this year’s World Championship. He is a very good driver and a prominent media personality. In other words, as a product completely superior to all other drivers, Jouhki praises his driver.

– In Kalle’s case, there was no problem that there was no willingness for his services.

Nice salary

Of the “big lines” mentioned by Jouhki, the two most important are undoubtedly the length of the contract and salary.

The professional negotiator naturally does not disclose the exact sums of money to the public.

– That’s all I can say, that financially the agreement is very good. Both the actual salary and the success bonuses calculated on top of it, Jouhki describes.

According to estimates, the 22-year-old Finnish driver has already earned well over a million with his current contract, when 11 race wins and the bonuses from the drivers’ and manufacturers’ World Championship titles are taken into account.

So it’s still a question of a million deal?

– And we are certainly not talking about just one million, but clearly larger sums, Jouhki answers.

Jouhki does not want to say whether Rovanperä’s new contract is more expensive than Tommi Mäkinen a deal signed with Subaru for the 2002 season. It carries the reputation of being Jouhki’s most profitable contract of all time.

However, it is such a historical situation that Jouhki has not been able to negotiate such huge sums with his driver since Mäkinen’s time.

– Of course, there hasn’t been a world champion for whom I would have negotiated a contract, Jouhki reminds.

Among others, Jouhki’s “stable” was between Mäkinen and Rovanperä Mikko Hirvonen and Jari-Matti Latvala.

Appropriate length

Jouhki has had its own principle regarding the duration of the contract for decades.

– The optimal length is two years of the actual contract, and then another year with an option, possibly on top. I don’t make longer contracts, because the balance of power can change in that time. There is no risk of that in two years, Jouhki states.

Jouhki says that he made one-year deals for his drivers out of necessity. In Rovanperä’s case, it is a multi-year extension.

It wasn’t better before?

The discussion about the future of the World Rally Championship is currently hot.

No one seems to know exactly in which direction the sport should be taken.

In Jouhki’s opinion, the darkest talk about the sport is pointless.

– The sport is often compared to the beginning of the 2000s, when several car brands participated and the rally was apparently more popular. I wouldn’t say that that popularity has changed at all. Today, I think the sport is featured in the media even more than before, thanks to the internet and better television. The audience is much wider, says Jouhki.

From the beginning of the 2000s, Jouhki would bring more factory stables to the series. It would bring more driving places and thereby stimulate competition.

– The dynamics in contract negotiations would also change when there was more supply of places. The stables would be able to lay down the conditions in completely different ways than at the moment, Jouhki believes.

But not for Rovanpera.

– When there is a product like Kalle Rovanperä on the driver market, more teams wouldn’t matter. There would only be more demand.