This first coronation would make the 21-year-old Nordic the youngest titled driver in the WRC - and by far.
So far, the record is held by Briton Colin McRae, crowned in 1995 at 27 years, 7 months and 25 days.
Thanks to five successes this season, Rovanperä (Toyota) leads the championship with a good margin: 203 points against 131 for the Estonian Ott Tänak (Hyundai), his runner-up, and 116 for Elfyn Evans (Toyota), at dawn of the 10th round of the season from Thursday to Sunday.
At the Rally of the Gods, if the Finn will be keen to redeem himself after his retirement on leaving the road at Ypres in Belgium - where he could already, mathematically, be titled in mid-August - he will once again be in line see the title.
To be crowned this weekend, the Toyota driver must have a 91-point lead on Sunday evening over his first pursuer.
This lead would indeed be unrecoverable during the last three rallies of the season - 30 points can be won at most in one round.
The scenarios are still multiple four rounds from the end.
But the chances are very real for the son of Harri Rovanperä, a former driver and winner of the Swedish rally in 2001.
Among them, if Rovanperä wins the rally by winning the Power Stage (a special which is worth five bonus points in the championship) and Tänak finishes at best 5th on Sunday without bonus, the Finn will be titled.
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For his part, if Tänak wants to play the spoilsports, he just needs to score at least 12 points to repel the coronation of Rovanperä.
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In recent years, Rovanperä has brought down a multitude of them: the youngest driver to score points in the World Championship in Australia in 2017 (the year of his debut at this level), he was also the youngest on a podium in WRC in Sweden in 2020, to lead an event in Estonia the same year, to be at the top of the drivers' classification after the Arctic Rally, in Finland, in 2021...
Last year, at 20, he also became the youngest driver to win a WRC rally in Estonia.
But to clinch the Grail in Greece, Rovanperä knows it will first need heaven's favor: "Our chances this time will probably depend a lot on the weather," explained the winner of the round last season.
And to continue: "if the weather is dry, I think it will be very difficult for us to open the road on Friday. But if it is, it will probably not be much easier for our rivals right behind us. ".
The leader also knows that he will have a hard time facing the victorious Hyundais thanks to Tänak on the last rallies.
In Greece, the South Korean team can also count on the Belgian Thierry Neuville, 4th overall, and the Spaniard Dani Sordo, 4th in the heat last year.
At Toyota, in addition to Rovanperä, the team will count in its ranks the Welshman Evans, 3rd overall, the Japanese Takamoto Katsuta and the Finn Esapekka Lappi, who shares the wheel this season with the French world champion Sébastien Ogier.
Another Frenchman who is also doing a partial program this year, Sébastien Loeb will be present for this 10th round (out of 13).
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The nine-time world champion between 2004 and 2012 won three times in Greece, in 2005, 2008 and 2012. He will have at his side at Ford the Irishman Craig Breen, the Briton Gus Greensmith and another tricolor, Pierre-Louis Loubet.
© 2022 AFP