From Junior ERC to Junior WRC gold in one year for Johansson
© ERC
ERC

From Junior ERC champion to world champion* for Johansson

Mille Johansson is the FIA Junior WRC champion for 2025 after he came out on top of a three-way title fight on the Central European Rally today to make the most of his Junior ERC prize drive.
Written by ERC
3 min readPublished on
Johansson won a season-long Junior WRC campaign, supported by WRC Promoter GmbH – which promotes both the FIA World Rally Championship and FIA European Rally Championship – for winning the Hankook-supplied Junior ERC in 2024.
Starting the Central European Rally’s deciding test trailing Taylor Gill by 7.0sec, Johansson produced the drive of his life to beat his Australian rival through the Power Stage by 8.6sec, a performance that earned the Swede the Junior WRC crown by 1.6sec in a thrilling finish.
Johansson, who was co-driven by countryman Johan Grönvall, said: “It’s been quite a messy rally from my side I would say. We started quite good but on Saturday we got stuck in a ditch on the first stage in the morning and we lost 30 seconds. From that point it has just been to not lose any time but not take any big risks.
“This day has just been flat out from the beginning. It’s quite an unbelievable finish to the season with one stage that is deciding the whole championship, but I’m super-happy to be able to push so hard when I really needed to, that I had the capacity to do so.
“Before the final stage we said it was all or nothing, I’d rather be stuck in the forest than to finish second, so I’m happy to be at the finish.
“It’s quite unique to win a championship the first year you do it. We saw the whole season where we don’t have the same experience of all the events the others have and for sure it’s an advantage if you do the championship season one season more or before. It’s been a very tough season for us but I’m super-happy to end it this way.”
Johansson follows a long list of stars by becoming Junior WRC champion

Johansson follows a long list of stars by becoming Junior WRC champion

© ERC

Johansson, whose prize is four WRC2 rounds in 2026 driving a Hankook-equipped Ford Fiesta Rally2 run by the M-Sport Ford World Rally Team, joins an illustrious list of Junior ERC champions. They include Sébastiens Loeb and Ogier, Craig Breen, Elfyn Evans and Dani Sordo.
Twenty-year-old Johansson is the third Junior ERC champion to win the Junior WRC title following on from Stéphane Lefebvre (2014) and Emil Bergkvist (2018).
Tom Kristensson and Sami Pajari – Junior ERC runners-up in 2018 and 2021 respectively – were also Junior WRC champions with Kristensson winning in 2021, one year before Pajari triumphed.
Norbert Maior, the Junior ERC title winner in 2023, was the Junior WRC runner-up the following year. Mārtiṇš Sesks, who claimed Junior ERC title gold in 2018, finished second to Kristensson in Junior WRC two seasons later.
Meanwhile, Calle Carlberg will attempt to follow Johansson's lead when he steps up to Junior WRC in 2026 as the Junior ERC champion for 2025.
*Subject to confirmation