Hiratsuka, Japan—The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., is pleased to announce that 2022 WRC champion Kalle Rovanperä, driving a car fitted with YOKOHAMA’s global flagship ADVAN brand tires and wheels, was the victor in Round 2 of FORMULA DRIFT® JAPAN (hereafter, FDJ), held on May 20-21 on the Ebisu Circuit Nishi (West) Course in Fukushima Prefecture. Rovanperä’s victory in his FDJ debut is the second in a row for Yokohama Rubber–supported drivers at this year’s FDJ, following the Round 1 win by 13-year old Hiroya Minowa, who also was drifting on ADVAN tires.

Yokohama Rubber supplied Rovanperä with its ADVAN NEOVA AD09, YOKOHAMA’s strongest street sports tires and ADVAN Racing RS-DF Progressive aluminum sports wheels. The ADVAN NEOVA AD09 tires have a well-balanced combination of enhanced levels of dry grip, controllability, and wear resistance. Driving KR69 CUSCO Racing’s Red Bull GR COROLLA, Rovanperä finished first in the solo-run qualifying round with a score of 97 points. In the final one-on-one tournament round, Rovanperä displayed aggressive but smooth drifting with precise control to win each of his matches and capture the championship. Yokohama Rubber’s support for Rovanperä, a highly talented young driver attracting attention from drifting fans around the world, is reinforcing its ADVAN brand’s reputation as high-performance tires. 　

Kalle Rovanperä is a rally driver from Finland. He began full participation in the World Rally Championship (WRC) in 2020. After finishing the 2021 season with two victories and an overall fourth place driver’s ranking, in 2022 he became the youngest WRC champion at the age of 22. Before coming to Japan for FDJ Round 2, Rovanperä was the victor in Round 5 of the 2023 WRC held in Portugal on May 11-14. Having mastered drifting techniques at the age of eight, Rovanperä has deep knowledge of drift competition and is also participating in the Drift Masters European Championship series.

FDJ is an international version of the FORMULA DRIFT® series held in the United States. Inaugurated in 2014, FDJ essentially is a reverse import from the US FORMULA DRIFT®, which has elevated the popularity of drift driving, a motorsport that originated in Japan.

Under Yokohama Rubber’s three-year (2021–2023) medium-term management plan, Yokohama Transformation 2023 (YX2023), the consumer tire business aims to maximize the sales ratios of high-value-added YOKOHAMA tires, namely the global flagship ADVAN brand, the GEOLANDAR brand of tires for SUVs and pickup trucks, and various winter tires.YX2023 also positions participation in motorsports activities as crucial to the company’s effort to develop new tire technologies that will further strengthen the ADVAN and GEOLANDAR brands. Yokohama Rubber therefore is again participating in a wide variety of motorsports events in Japan and around the globe, from top-category to grassroots events.