SM-Itäralli, Joensuu 9th of March

Finally my home event is back in the Finnish rally championship calendar. Nowadays I live in Helsinki, but I still regard Itäralli as my home event. I don't even have to lie when saying that Itäralli has the best roads in the championship. Ask any driver or co-driver. The roads are sometimes fast, sometimes slower. All the time going up and down the hillsides. Simply brilliant.

The rally started with the normal recce on Friday. Nothing much to report. The only out of the ordinary thing was towing one of our fellow competitors out of a snowbank when his Renault Megane had slid of the road. I haven't been very impressed with my Volvo XC60 as a winter car especially since it doesn't want to turn at all. Have to give it thumbs up as a towing truck however. Didn't even break a sweat getting the Renault out of the ditch. In the evening we relaxed at one of Jari's friends place and went to sauna and a jacuzzi. The jacuzzi was on his backyard. I'm not kidding. It was awesome to sit in a warm jacuzzi in the middle of the Finnish winter.

Saturday's first special stage wasn't the best for us. I made one mistake when reading the notes (luckily an obvious one in an easy place) and Jari also took it on the safe side. Our main competitors had pressed flat out so we took a beating. On the second stage we drove better, but still took a beating again. Not fun. On the third one we lost a lot of time again. This time we were a little bit amazed since that kind of a stage would have normally suited Jari's driving style. Jari was complaining that the car was little out of breath. After the third stage we headed to service where Eero from Printsport connected his laptop to our car's motec. The analysis indicated that our turbo wasn't giving the boost it should on the lower spectrum of rev band and was giving normal boost only on the high revs. Well that explained some of the lacking speed. Not all of it though.

From service we headed to super special stage on Joensuu horse track. Nothing to comment on that. It was a super special... Stages number 5 and 6 were the best on the rally. The fifth a super fast roller coaster of a stage! We don't have our own incar films in youtube but here is the stage from Juha Salo's car Juha Salo, Itäralli, stage 5 Stage number 6 was 30km long spectacular piece of road. Mostly really fast, but between 20-25km you had 5km section of really technical small road again some incar footage from Juha Salo's car. Juha Salo, Itäralli, stage 6 What can I say about the stages. The stopwatch didn't like our work again, but the stages themselves were awesome! On these kinds of roads you know why you love rallying. In the end of stage six the started some noise from the back of the car and on the road section towards service it started to get worse. We checked the propshaft bolts and they seemed to be tight. The noise seemed to be somehow linked to the propshaft since the noise came an went. It didn't gradually get worse like normally when something is about to explode. We limped to service where the Printsport mechanics were waiting also to help out our own mechanics to diagnose the problem. It turbned that vulcanization of the propshaft had been damaged and it was causing the vibration. Full credit to the mechanics for the service. Diagnosing the problem and changing the propshaft took around 17 minutes. I was still stuffing pasta in my mouth when they reported that the car is good to go.

Stages number 7 and 8 were the same as stages 1 and 2. Except now we drove in the dark. We changed our driving style to be more aggressive and it immediately helped. On those stages the time difference to fastest guys dropped to the same level as in Mikkeli. Also we managed to climb a couple of places on the last two stages to 11th overall. Stil not exactly the result we were looking for. On the positive side we managed to analyze what we were doing wrong and know it in this kind of stages in the future.

The next Finnish championship rally is in the middle of June in Laihia so now it's the time to do some servicing to the Mitsubishi. Obviously we need a new turbo, there are always bushes to be changed, etc etc. Before Laihia we have to get some gravel experience of the car since we haven't driven one meter with it on gravel yet. Hopefully I'll be updating my blog with rallying stuff during April and May even though the championship continues in June.

SM Vaakunaralli, Mikkeli

Few weeks after the retirement in Arctic Rally it was time to throw the monkey of our backs and get a proper start for the season in Mikkeli. Mikkeli is known for fast roads and I was personally looking forward to it. The ride on fast sections would definitely be something different compared to the R2 Fiesta on previous year. The rally started with a compact recce on Friday. It has also been a tradition in Mikkeli that there isn't too much space time during the recce. After the recce we already had to stages in the dark on Friday evening. First one was a proper 15km long forest stage. On that one we didn't really excel. I was nervous with my pace note reading and Jari was also nervous with his driving. So we both fed each others insecurity. We lost surprisingly little on that stage. Apparently it had been difficult to many other crews as well. The second stage was a super special on a horse racetrack. We just drove it cleanly through and headed to evening service. Surprisingly we were 3rd quickest on the super special. The really big suprise was Veli-Pekka Karttunen. The 19 year old youngster was driving his second pace note rally with a beat up renault clio. He was leading SM2 class and was actually 5th overall on the super special. I used the be in the same AKK training team with him in 2011 and I wasn't that surprised to see his pace. I didn't expect him to be so high on the results, but I knew the pace is there.

Picture taken by Valokuu/Kari Kaistinen

 For Saturday we started with a high spirits. We knew for a fact that our speed is better than on Friday's first stage. The first stage on Saturday started really well. We were in our normal working mode. Both the driver and co-driver. Halfway through the 20km stage we caught Jari Ketomaa with his skoda S2000. He had been kissing some snowbanks and his engine air intake was full of snow. He didn't wan't to let us pass and we had to struggle behind him in the snowdust for half the stage. It took a lot of effort to concetrate in our own doing and not to go off the road since you couldn't see very much. In the very end of the stage the road turned faster and there we had to leave more space since on a fast road would have gone of the road for sure. After the finish line I totally lost my nerves and let it all out. The first time ever I have been so pissed off during a rally. Well once in five years isn't that bad to flip. As long as it doesn't develop into a habit. When sitting in a queue for service we talked with Ketomaa for him not letting us pass. He actually admitted that he had known we were behind him and didn't let us pass, because it would have had cost him 10 more seconds. Jolly good fellow. Fair sportmanship and so on. You don't normally see that kind of behaviour in Finnish rally championship since you are stuck with the same guys on all the rallies in the time control points so normally there is a good spirit among the competitors. On stages everybody tries to push, but afterwards it isn't uncommon the competitors to compare car setups or driving techniques. Special stage 3, Mikkeli, tailgating Ketomaa

Picture taken by Valokuu/Kari Kaistinen

Picture taken by Valokuu/Kari Kaistinen

Picture taken by Valokuu/Kari Kaistinen

On the fourth stage we managed to drive a clean run. The incident on the third one was erased from memory and we both had a good feeling after the stage. I really enjoyed the speeds of the evo on that stage. Here is the onboard clip Special stage 4, Mikkeli

Picture taken by Valokuu/Kari Kaistinen

On the fifth and sixth stages it was business as usual. Nothing much to report. Except that in the end of the sixth stage we caught some snow in our own air filter and lost some power. Looking at the stage results after the rally we noticed that we had climbed up basically one position per stage. We finished fifth overall which was a really good result. Teemu Asunmaa behind us was only 2,5 seconds slower so it was very close. The feeling for Itäralli in Joensuu on the 9th of March is very good. We are getting more familiar with the car, Jari is getting more into driving the evo after subaru and I'm getting a bit by bit into the reading rhythm suitable for the fast 4wd car. There definitely is more speed to be found in our team since in Mikkeli we were driving inside our comfort zone and not exploring our limits. The two fastest guys (Juha Salo and Ari "Raaka-Arska" ("Rough Arnold") Vihavainen) have been driving with 4wd cars for decades and their cars in some aspects are better than our international group N spec evo. Calculating the second/km time difference to Juha and Ari provides a good comparison point to us to see our development during this season.