Riihimäki -rally 14th of January 2012

Riihimäki -rally had the honor of being the first rally of the 2012 Finnish Rally Championship. The weather had been really warm and things weren't looking too good for a winter rally. On the previous weekend we headed 450km north of Helsinki to Nilsiä where one could test tyres and car in proper winter conditions. Two days of testing went well and the whole crew got the chance to get some routine of their tasks.

Any worries of a proper winter rally vanished during the week before the Riihimäki -rally. Colder temperatures and some snow enabled a nice winter rally. The first stage of the rally was super special held in the center of Riihimäki on a horse race track. We didn't try anything special and kept driving really clean. The stopwatch appreciated that and we were the fastest 2wd car in the Finnish championship. This year the 2wd cars have been divided into two categories. SM2-class competes with maximum 2 liter cars (civics, fiestas, R2 clio) and the SM3-class with R2 and R1 cars. Both classes fight for one 2wd championship. The R2s are faster on narrow and technical roads and the bigger engined cars on faster stages. Our SM3-class in funny in that way that we are the only crew driving a Ford Fiesta. Everybody else has Citroën C2 R2s in normal or max guises.

The second stage we drove too calmly and lost 12 seconds to Joonas Lindroos in our class. Lindroos was second in Finnish 4wd championship in 2011 and now stepped one step down back to 2wd drive cars. So we didn't loose to a slow driver, but anyway would have been nice to continue leading our class. Third stage was more to our pace and we only lost a few seconds to Lindroos. We headed to the first service second in our class.

After the service there were three stages where we basically drove neck and neck with Lindroos. Didn't manage to close down the gap however. After those three stages we headed back to the service area for our second service. The tactic for the last two stages was quite obvious. No heroics and secure good points with the second place. That was quite easy to do. We also finished fourth overall with the 2wd category. A couple of civics were also faster than us on the fast roads. Next day after the rally we went and drove the stages though again to see where we could have driven faster, improve our pace notes and read the notes with better timing. An exercise I definitely recommend.

Next rally in the championship is the legendary Arctic Lapland Rally 27th-28th of January in Rovaniemi at the Arctic circle. A two day rally with 233 special stage kilometers and some epic scenery. Since the rally is so long we'll fly to Lapland already on Sunday and start the recce on Monday.