Rovanperä vs. Evans Prediction on May 11-14, 2023

Match info

Nearly 90 cars are registered to compete in the Vodafone Rally de Portugal, round five of the FIA World Rally Championship for this year. The race will start on Thursday, May 11, at 09:01 AM local time with a Shakedown in Baltar and will end on Sunday, May 14, at 12:15 with Stage 19 (Power Stage) in Fafe.

Meeting statistics

The first of seven straight WRC gravel races begins in Portugal with the 2023 Rally de Portugal and will continue through the beginning of October, presenting a variety of difficulties for the teams and drivers. After four rounds, the TGR-WRT drivers are in a tight championship race: Elfyn Evans, who finished first last time out on the asphalt roads of Croatia, is tied on points with Sébastien Ogier (who doesn’t include Portugal in his schedule of selected events this year) at the top of the WRC table (69 points each), and Kalle Rovanperä is only one point behind them. There’s only an 11-point gap between the top five.

Evans and later Rovanperä triumphed in each of the previous two years, giving TGR-WRT a good recent track record in Portugal. Takamoto Katsuta steps up to join them in the main TGR-WRT lineup for the second time this season and compete for constructors’ championship points on a rally where he has also performed well in the past.

The Rally de Portugal is based in the north of the country, in the second-largest city of Porto, with the service park close in Matosinhos. It was a part of the first WRC season, which was held 50 years ago. It may be anticipated that many ardent spectators would line the fast-paced but tricky stages. Usually soft and sandy at first, the surface turns into rough and rutted for the second pass, though the frequently changing weather can produce a diverse appearance.

As in previous years, the ceremonial start will take place in the center city of Coimbra on Thursday (May 11) night. The action, not counting Shakedown, will then begin nearby on Friday, May 12, with a trio of stages that are tackled twice around a mid-day tire fitting zone in Arganil. The day is concluded with a single pass of the Mortágua stage and a new super special stage in the coastal city of Figueira do Foz. The longest stage of the season so yet, Amarante, comes on Saturday’s (May 13) 148.68 competitive kilometer-long longest day of the rally, which also includes another super special stage at the Lousada rallycross circuit that takes place in the evening. The focal point of Sunday (May 14), as usual, is the renowned Fafe stage, which serves as the location for two of the final four tests, including the rally-ending Power Stage.

Match analytics

2023 was intended to demonstrate Rovanperä’s true brilliance. You’d think the questioning would end after winning the world title in 2022. Everything else that happens once a driver has shown they can win the world is just a bonus, right? Not exactly. There are no longer any questions about whether Finn can handle the pressures of continuously competing at the front of the WRC, and there weren’t many questions about that before. But this season, Rovanperä must deal with a completely new form of pressure and interrogation: the stress of being the one everyone is trying to defeat and having a target on his back. Can he win again in 2023 by demonstrating that 2022 wasn’t an anomaly? No-deposit bonuses sportsbooks on the web have some doubts, but as far as Rally de Portugal, given that he has shown it was his playground last year, we believe that he can repeat the success. Especially given the absence of Ogier.

Check STS to see the odds for Rovanperä’s overall victory in Portugal, as well as the odds for other potential favorites, such as the favorite No.2 in our opinion – the drivers’ vice-leader in the overall standings, Evans.