My rally trip started already one day before the stages on Wednesday. University of Jyväskylä held a seminar Promoting Driver Performance. Topics included Risto Mannisenmäki (Tommi Mäkinen's ex co-driver) talking about AKK Driving Academy - Rally coaching in Finland, Robert Reid (Richard Burns' ex co-driver) talking about Comprehensive Motorsport Coaching - Limitations of a top driver. Other topics ranged from dividing attention between driving and secondary actions to topics like emotional attributes of Finnish motorsport athletes and how to train psychological skills. All in all I enjoyed the seminar a lot since it gave a some different angles to rallying that you don't normally come across when talking about rallying with other enthusiasts. At least in Finland you don't normally start a conversation with another rally driver/co-driver by asking that has he/she been doing any mental exercises during the rally weekend.
Spectating the stages started on Thursday. There were only three stages scheduled for Thursday evening and we chose to go to the second one Laukaa. The Finnish police were out on the roads on force like normal to show everybody that they are there and despite traffic jams everybody should keep driving by the book. In Laukaa we didn't have too good spectating position since we chose to go to a field where there were a couple of hundred other people also. You could see the cars for a long time, but not a place where anything interesting would happen. Really positive surprise was the excellent pace of Jari Ketomaa with the WRC Ford. Everybody expected him to be quick, but we was driving fastest times during Thursday before having to slow down so that he wouldn't have to be first on the road on Friday. Sad news for Finns was that Mikko Hirvonen hit a tree on Thursday and even though he didn't retire the fight for victory ended then and there. On Thursday we watched almost all the cars, before driving to Mikkeli to my friend's place for the night.
On Friday we drove from Mikkeli to Lahti area. We decided to go to special stage 6/9 Hyväneula since we got a tip from one Finnish rally driver that there is one right hand corner after a crest which has had "off roading" whenever the road has been used as a special stage. The corner turned out to be a good spectating position. There was a hill on the outside corner we people could position easily so that everyone can see. The first cars drove nicely through the bend like expected. After that there began to be a lot of loose gravel outside the optimal driving line. PG Anderson had a close call with Tommi Mäkinen Racing's Subaru when he missed the line a bit and had to floor the throttle and throw the car sideways on the loose gravel to get through the bend. Same thing happened also to Prokop with his S2000 Ford. The struts were really deep for cars coming later and the bend started to loose it's interest. We chose to move to special stage Koukunmaa. Later I saw from youtube that Latvala had a big moment in the bend because the struts had thrown him of the line and on privateer WC Mini also went off. Aftermath you can say that maybe we shouldn't have moved to another stage after all.
In Koukunmaa we had a really quiet spectating place after some field on a right hand corner. No action to be expected since there wasn't anything surprising in the corner. Just your average right hand corner that narrowed a little bit. The most interesting part on Friday was to listen to the rally radio and follow special stage results from wrc.com. Ketomaa unfortunately went off so that ended his big surprise. Matti Rantanen also went off with his Mini WRC. I was a bit surprised about that since he has had good results in Finland and I haven't qualified him as the type of driver who crashes a lot. Luckily the driver and co-driver were OK since he went off in a high speed corner. On the positive side Mikko Pajunen showed spectacular pace with a Renaul Clio R3 against the Mitsubishi Evos and Subaru Imprezas in the PWRC class. He was running second in class after Friday with a n/a engined 2wd car. One class below Esapekka Lappi (C2 R2) and Jukka Korhonen (Fiesta R2) had a great battle against each other which Lappi finally won on Saturday. Both also showed their pace against the WRC Academy's Fiesta R2 drivers by leaving them trailing way behind.
Not showing 100% commitment we ended our rally trip already on Friday since we didn't want to drive back north to Jyväskylä for Saturdays stages and then back south to Helsinki after the rally. I followed the Saturday's stages from the internet. Loeb deserved his victory this year, but let's hope there will be a Finn setting the pace next year.
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