Kalle Rovanperä withdraws from the 2026 Super Formula season due to health issues
- Tarun Suresh
- 3 hours ago
- 2 min read
Written by Tarun Suresh
Kalle Rovanperä is a two-time World Rally Champion with a multitude of records to his name, including the youngest to win the championship and the youngest to win a rally.
Last year, in an unexpected move, he announced his retirement from the World Rally Championship, being just 26 years old. His retirement was to make way for his switch to single-seaters. Rovanperä wanted to chase the crown jewel of single-seater racing, Formula One.
His first step on the ladder to F1 was a stint at Formula Regional Oceania. In his first go at single-seater racing, he managed to finish in sixteenth in the standings after withdrawing from the final four rounds of the season. He ended his time in the series with four consecutive top ten finishes, including a podium in a wet weather race.
His second step on the ladder was scheduled to be a full season in Super Formula in 2026, driving for KCMG, before his first full season in Formula 2 with Hitech Grand Prix.
He initially withdrew from the 2025 Super Formula Post-Season/Rookie Tests after just one test session due to health issues. He completed all days of testing in the 2026 Pre-Season Tests and looked to be acclimating quite well to this style of driving, especially considering he only started driving single-seaters a few months earlier.
However, his health issues seem to have worsened, and he has announced his withdrawal from the 2026 Super Formula season and a hiatus from racing until his condition recovers.
He has been diagnosed with Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV), which causes mild to intense feelings of dizziness and is often triggered by specific changes to the positioning of the head.
KCMG and Toyota, on the other hand, have announced Rovanperä's replacement for the season, Seita Nonaka. Nonaka won the F4 Japanese Championship in 2021 and finished third in Super Formula Lights in 2024. In the following year, 2025, he made his Super Formula debut, filling in for an injured Oliver Rasmussen at Team Impul in the opening double header, and then filling in for Kamui Kobayashi at KCMG in the following two rounds, in the second of which he scored points.
After Toyota’s mid-season reevaluation of their junior drivers, they decided to drop Hibiki Taira from TGMGP, and Nonaka took his place. He failed to score points in his stint there and was dropped for Kamui Kobayashi after a restructuring of the Toyota driver roster.
Nonaka has been given a second chance to prove himself in Super Formula, this time with his first full season in the series.
