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While M-Sport Ford started the season with a win, it remained their only win and rest of the season was practically a fight between Rovanpera and Hyundai. Kalle started well and by half-season marker he already had racked up five wins against two of his rivals. This allowed him to take it easier for the remainder of the season.
Podiums distributed much more evenly, but mainly this was thanks to Hyundai's late season push. Rovanpera and Tanak scored as many podiums in the end. Loeb's sole podium was his season opening win whereas other semi-retiree Ogier managed three podiums, one of which was a win.
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Only driver to score at least some points on every rally was Neuville. Rovanpera scored on all but final rally but as his scores were mostly from podium finishes, his points total was far higher.
Most retirements took place at Hyundai where young Oliver Solberg amounted half of them (and duly got kicked from the team before season ended). But Adrien Fourmaux retired even more, on half of his WRC starts of the season and M-Sport decided to withdraw his entry from three out of four final events of the season.
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Unsurprisingly it was Rovanpera who won most of the stages, but his dominance here isn't quite as staggering as one would expect with just 27% of stages won. Other recent world champions like Ogier, Loeb and Gronholm all have exceeded that percentage quite comfortably, achieving ratios up to 40%.
However, Rovanpera won seven Power Stages which netted him a whopping 35 extra points in the course of the season.
His record on leading rally is better than his stage wins statistics, proving that while he was fast, he also was clever and mature to concentrate on maintaining the lead when it was secure without extra bravados. Except in Power Stages, as noted above.
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Once again, two fastest were Finland and Sweden but surprisingly slowest was not Acropolis but season ending Japan. Safari had longest route and Portugal biggest entry although Ypres (Belgium) also boasted an impressive start list. Portugal's large entry list also shrunk the most with clearly the highest attrition ratio.
Portugal's Amarante was again longest stage at 37+ kilometers. One more event than 2021 saw total stage distance increase but average stage length dropped slightly.
Ford overtook number one position from Skoda as the most often used rally car while Hyundai kept third position but improved their share.
French were again the most numerous nationality amongst rally crews whereas Finns jumped to second position while last year's number two, Italians, became scarcer.
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Rovanpera started the season very well and seemed to disappear behind the corner before others noticed him even gone. In light of stats, his stellar start seemed to dampen a bit towards the end of the season but he's still king of stats for 2022.
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