August 27th 2011. First time for me to get to be in a 00 crew. First time in any of the zeros. I have to admit that I really liked the experience. I got an enjoyable day in a rally car without the usual nervous waiting to get to the first stage. With the 00 car you can drive good rally speed in some places and avoid taking any risks. Of course primary mission of the safety car is to check that the stages a safe for spectators and competitors. Being a safety car is a task where the organizer regards your crew as one who can be trusted to do this with certain amount of experience from rallying.The day started with a breakfast with the driver in Imatra's Valtionhotelli. A beautiful old place next to a deep ravine. From there me and the driver Juha Huttunen headed collecting the route maps and time schedules for safety car crews.
Before the stages we participated in a meeting for the safety cars. There it was explained for everybody what is expected from them and what kind of things to keep an eye on. The briefing was very useful for a first timer like me. The start of the rally was in the middle of the town on a walking street. The nice location and beautiful weather enabled people to have a close look at the rally cars and ask questions from the crews queuing for the start. Everybody I talked to liked the location which enabled normal people to learn more about rally sport.
From the centre of Imatra we headed towards the first stage which was a narrow, but fast road. After the stage I had to unlearn something compared to a normal rally. One mustn't follow the time card, but the schedule given to the safety cars. I was planning on going too early to the time control in the beginning of the second stage. The second stage was a really fast stage and there we even got to entertain the crowds a bit. The day was quite hot so the brakes on our fwd Opel Kadett started to overheat which caused us to navigate through one corner unusually sideways. Third stage was also quite fast stage. Nothing out of normal except one jump where there was a bunch of spectators with a sign "more throttle!". I found that quite funny. Spectators don't usually bother doing something like that in Finland.
Since the rally was only three stages long our day ended early. After our duties as safety cars the organizer wanted feed back from all the safety car crews if there was anything they could improve the following years. We couldn't really find anything to complain and the weather had been nice and warm so all in all a good day. my first time in a zero car, but hopefully not the last.
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