FILE PHOTO: FIA World Rally Championship - Rally Sweden - Stage 7 of Second Round - Torsby, Sweden - February 15, 2020. Kalle Rovanpera of Finland (Toyota Yaris WRC) looks on. TT News Agency/Micke Fransson/via REUTERS /File Photo
(Reuters) - Toyota's double world rally champion Kalle Rovanpera will compete part-time next season to recharge his batteries after agreeing a new multi-year deal with the Japanese manufacturer team.
The Finn became the youngest ever world rally champion last year aged 22 and took a second successive crown this season.
"Next year I am only going to be driving some of the events and the biggest reason for this is that I have been driving rally cars for 15 years already," he said in a Toyota statement on Monday.
"And while the last seasons have been amazing of course, they have also been really demanding mentally and physically.
"So I felt that now would be a good moment to take a year for recharging the batteries, and then come back again full-time to fight for the championship once more with a full attack."
Rovanpera said he was also looking forward to doing some drifting as well as other forms of motorsport.
France's eight times world champion Sebastien Ogier will continue part-time with the Japanese manufacturer, whose full-time drivers for 2024 are Welshman Elfyn Evans and Japan's Takamoto Katsuta.
Evans has been runner-up three times in the last four years and now has a real chance of becoming only the third Briton to win the championship and the first since the late Richard Burns in 2001.
"We’ve continued to make progress this year. I’m keen to build on that and be even better in 2024," he said.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin in London, editing by Ken Ferris)
