Merikarvia rally 18th of August

A couple of weeks after Neste Rally Finland it was time to get back to our familiar Finnish championship. The championship continued near Pori in Merikarvia. The good thing was that the playing field was equal to everybody. There hadn't been a championship rally near Pori in ages so the stages were new to everyone. The stages turned out to be mostly fast and wide, but then you suddenly were also driving on narrow and slow roads. A quick attitude change was required from time to time. 

We started the first stage with our normal pace. After the stage it was a bit of a surprise to find out that we had been fastest in our class with a margin of almost 17 seconds. Obviously driving the NORF a couple of weeks earlier helped to keep rust out of driver's wrists. The second stage was interesting. First driving on a really narrow "summer cottage road" and then in the blasting several kilometers flat out without even touching the brake pedal of our R2 Fiesta. We lost time to bigger engine d Honda Civics, but again were fastest in our class. 

The third and fourth stages followed the same pattern. Driving with our normal rhythm and being fastest in our own class. The most interesting part of the rally was stage number five. By being 44km long it was roughly half of the rally. The stage also had very challenging roads so it wasn't a stage you could just cruise through. We tried to attack on the stage since it suited our small R2 car quite well and the was a slim chance of catching Ville Hautamäki's civic which was only 15 seconds ahead of us. We didn't catch Ville, but managed to win our class by 1min30s so can't complain. The overall championship standings after Merikarvia remain very interesting. Joonas Lindroos secured the 2wd championship win, but Andreas is in a close battle with Ville Hautamäki for the second place in the season finale in Kerava on the 15th of September.