2 Burst results for "Kelly Robin Perez"
The Autosport Podcast
"kelly robin perez" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"Following this one, prepare to be amazed. Colin McRae's previous record of being the youngest, world rally champion at 27, hasn't just been beaten. It just got smashed. Let's find out who just became the youngest ever champion how he ended Finland's 20 year wait for a title. And what he can do for the future of the sport. Let's get up to speed with autosports, Tom Howard Tom. Welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for having us. Back on the show. So you just witnessed history being made in New Zealand with the youngest ever champion. The world rally championship. Let's remind ourselves, though, who the previous youngest champion was, tell us more. The legend that is all that was sadly Colin mccrea, certainly for me, he was a hero of mine growing up one of the reasons why I even got hooked into watching rallying and I'm sure there's several people of similar age to myself and an older and younger that would have also enjoyed watching Colin McRae. He was a real special talent on the his only world title in 1995 and did that at the age of 27, which was the youngest at the time. 27 back there would have been seen very, very young because champions were sort of, you know, the late 20s, early 30s, and sometimes mid 30s were sort of seen as the prime age to win a world title. So yes, Conor McRae was known as the mister maxim of attack. He was a very exciting driver to watch race for Subaru, the factory team and his early 90s then went to Ford and then he had his final season with citron in 2003. He still regarded as one of the legends of the sport even today, 26 years on since his world title. And in the top level of rallying in the modern era, tell me about the recent champions. And how long they'd been driving? Were they also all older? Inverted commas. Champions. If you're not too familiar with rallying and WRC, then in the last few couple of decades, we say it's been dominated by two Sebastian's two French French rally drivers, Sebastian Loeb, and Sebastian ogier, Loeb has the 9 time world champion, the most successful and greatest rally driver of the ball. He has 80 world rally championship wins and has been competing even this year on a part time basis at the age of 48 and still winning events so Monte Carlo in January, so Sebastian ogier took over from him. One 8 titles and is the reigning world champion this year until Kelly Robin Perez success. That sort of period of dominance was split by tanak who won the world title in 2019 for Toyota. So that's how the world rally scene has played out over the last few years. While following rally New Zealand over the weekend, Callie Robin perra is now world champion. They call him king Kelly. You could also call him birthday boy. Tell us about the weekend and Callie Robin Pereira being the new world champion. What's a weekend if you or Kelly off of Paris celebrating your 22nd birthday? I don't know. He does get any better, I guess. If you're a rally driver or if you're if you're dream is to win the world rally champion, it doesn't get any better than the weekend that Callie Robin Perez just experienced not only has he become that the youngest ever world champion at the age of 22 and one day. He also became the first Finnish world champion for 20 years, so it ended that drought for a rally mad nation. So it's a massive deal for Finland. They've already announced that there's going to have a special celebration day in the country in his hometown of your vascular. So it's a big deal for Finland. And a big deal for Kelly Rothenberg. I mean, he's just a phenomenal talent. It's a record, I reckon we won't see beaten. A new benchmark, which I think is just above and beyond what anyone could have imagined. Now, he hasn't come from nowhere, like all overnight success stories. It's been 20 years in the making. Maybe 22 years in the making. Because in the beginning, there was Harry, Robin pere. Yep, Callie's father, WRC driver, 1993 to 2006. What happened with his dad's career and how did that lead into Cali getting behind the wheel? Harry Robin pere a former factory driver for Peugeot and sayat as well and it's a bushy. So he's been around a while as Harry. But I only ever won one rally back in 2001 at Sweden. So he was a regular podium finisher, but never really a title contender. He was what you'd call, I guess, a very safe pair of hands. You would have implored him to just pick up the points and be that sort of driver there, but perhaps not the one you put your money behind to lead your team to a title. He's really has some helped build obviously his son Kelly wrote from pair in terms of the rally driver. From an early age, he's got him in the car in cars driving from I think 8 or 9. He's been Cali has been driving some sort of vehicle. What do you think about it? Yes, he's the youngest of a world champion at the age of 22, but he's been driving things for a very long time. And our over that time, you just build the skills. Boy, as he built some skills because most of the paddock most of the service park sorry would envy the skills that Kali Roth and bear have his age. Certainly, you just watching him, he is he has skills beyond his years. The composure that he has behind the wheel, I don't think we have seen in many drivers in all motor sport. It's something that I generally can't really describe, but he just has this sort of, I just jump in the car and I just go and do it. There's no worries, there is no sort of panic. He's machine like, I guess. Is the only way to sort of it's just a machine. I'm generally speechless at how good he is because we're obviously fold him all season 6 rally wins. But he just has this ability to just destroy his rivals, but he's real skill. And I guess this is sort of comes back to all those years that you've been training in all sorts of cars, trying to learn car control. And it's his car control, which sets him about apart from the rest, because when the weather gets tricky, Cali rov repair is untouchable. There is no one that can come near him when it starts raining or gets slippery.
The Autosport Podcast
"kelly robin perez" Discussed on The Autosport Podcast
"He also said he was quite sketchy in places Tom and he wasn't even fully under control, but described being in the zone. We talked about that on the podcast before where if you were driving a rally car where you are the car and the car is you and it's just all one, but he had to often you can there's a sports person do that for a period of time whether it's a hundred meter race in the Commonwealth Games have been watching or but to do it day after day is a superhuman effort. So it sounds like you're massively impressed by his weekend. Yeah, absolutely. I think everyone was hugely impressed by what tanak did and as I said earlier he was really sort of competing with lesser machinery. And I know that there was there was a bit of mind games from tannock, which was quite interesting during the weekend, you know, he was sort of saying our Toyota unbeatable here and that's fair because Toyota, this is their backyard, this is where the team is based. They are based in the host city of the rally vascular. They've won every rally Finland since their return to the championship since 2017. So they were fully expected to win this. So to be able to sort of fend them off like he did was just simply incredible. And clearly there's something going on behind the scenes. He was an inspired tanak. He was driving with a purpose that we haven't seen, perhaps this year. And let's remember that he did win in Sardinia, but this was a different kind of victory. And he was quite emotional for Tanaka at the end as well. He sort of paid tribute to his wife for being there for supporting him during some difficult times he didn't sort of allude to what those difficult times were, but he's clearly there was some there was some emotion involved in this victory. Which we haven't seen before. And as I said, the only way I could sort of describe it was he was sort of driving like a classic Colin McCrae maximum attack style that we've seen Colin McRae produce over the years where it's just full attack. There's sketchy moments at the very, very many sketchy moments, but somehow he manages to drag this through. And I think the telling points of this was on Friday where he sort of said, you know, the car is uncomfortable, but I have to be uncomfortable to be able to produce these times. And after one stage, even said that his hands were shaking, that just so how much effort and what he was doing to try and hold this car. He was physically shaking afterwards. So it was a herculean effort and one that will go down in history. And a battle of the Finns behind him over Friday and Saturday with lappy and Robin pair a bit of a ding dong between them earlier in the rally before Robin Perry pulled clear finishing order tanak first, Robin pair a second lappy third elf and Evans in fourth Thierry navy 6th if sorry a new deal and katsu was sick there wasn't he. And Gus Greene Smith in the first, the fourth. In 7th, I hadn't run down the order, which I hadn't so apologies dear listener. So Tom, what do you make of that battle of the Finns for second and third place? Yeah, so obviously calorie run per massively the favorite going into this rally with his home round. It was his homecoming, I think everyone was to deliver a victory. It would always be tough starting first on the road because we championship position, but he had a huge amount of support in Finland. If there was anyone worried that Finland not having a world champion for 20 years that the sport was sort of it's popularity was dwindling, then Cali rov and pere has reignited this because the crowds were huge over the weekend. His support was massive. If he wanted to get a glimpse of calorie often pairing the service park, you were sort of 6 or 7 deep in the crowd. The Finns really do love this rally. An interesting stat and I will get onto the answer to the actual competition in a moment, but interesting stat that appeared yesterday was to sort of give you context as to how popular rallying is in Finland the entire rally is broadcast on pay television and free to air television via online platform. They have their own special TV studio in the service park just for the finished television. Sort of a sky F one style type of studio. And the figures that were produced over the weekend were 5.5 million hours of WRC rally Finland were watched through the national television provider. Which are quite too, if we look at it from a population point of view, every thin watching at least one hour of WRC over the four days. So that's a that is what Raleigh is infinite. It is a national obsession. It blew my mind just how popular it is. It is just literally one of their most favorite things to do and watch. Okay, well let's quickly hear from Kelly Robin Perez in his own words after you spoke to him right now. You're obviously