Lauri Joona becomes the 2022 WRC3 champion after victory in Spain

The young flying Finn Lauri Joona was on top over the weekend in RallyRACC Catalunya – Costa Daurada as he clinched the 2022 WRC3 driver’s championship and became the fifth Finn this season to take a title after Kalle Rovanperä and co-driver Jonne Halttunen won the FIA World Rally Championship title for driver and co-driver in New Zealand. Emil Lindholm took the WRC2 Junior title most recently and Enni Mälkönen became the first female in three decades to take a co-driver title in WRC3, however, she´s the co-driver for Sami Pajari.

But the WRC3 title fight was quite a challenge for Joona as the other title contender Czech´s Jan Cerny started the Spanish rally in the lead and had a 2.5 seconds advantage heading to Sunday but later he went down to the second place and was constantly putting Joona under pressure after the Finn passed him. Joona managed to win the rally and the title by just 9 seconds dead.

“It was a big relief we didn’t have to drive that stage, I think we would have had to go through in three wheel drive and we would have lost 20sec. Of course our main target was Junior WRC but when we realised we had a possibility to be world champion in this series, we put our focus here. It was a risk coming to Spain where I do not have too much experience on Tarmac, but it has worked.” Joona said.

Official 2022 WRC3 Driver´s Championship standings