Manx National Rally, Isle of Man 10-11th of May 2013

Rallies are always mini adventures, but for me the Manx National rally was a bigger adventure than rallies normally. Like I wrote already it was my first rally outside Finland, my first rally on tarmac and my first rally reading pace notes in English. The journey started on Wednesday morning when me and my girlfriend flew from Helsinki to London Gatwick and from there to Isle of Man. Things don't always go as planned and the Gatwick ground crew managed to make a hole to the front of our airplane with a towing bar. So waiting the next flight to IoM and arriving four hours later than intended. Not much time after that than to find the hotel in Douglas, make a short trip to grocery store and eat dinner at the hotel. Then to bed.



Our hotel at Douglas

 The following morning I went to meet Malcolm at the TT Grandstand famous for the Isle of Man TT races. We had exchanged a lot of emails, but this was the first time we got to meet in person. The plan was to sign in for the recce and and drive through the stages. We had bought Pattersons notes for the stages and gotten some old notes from one local co-driver. If lucky we wouldn't have to make much changes to the notes I had prepared. Not the optimal situation since it's always better to make your own notes, but of course time was a luxury we didn't have in this rally. During the recce we made small modifications to the notes and felt comfortable with the notes we had. After the recce we drove to Peel where we had accomodation for the rest of the rally. The scenery was very beautiful. We don't have seaview, sandy beaches and a castle all in the same place here in Helsinki.

On Friday we started the rally around 7.30pm. So we had most of the day to set up the service area, get something to eat, go to scrutineering etc. Next to us in service was an ex Colin McRae legacy. I never would have thought I would get to see that legendary legacy.

At the service park you could also see some cars which you can't find in Finnish rallies because of our regulations. For example Darrians and group B metros.

The Friday's stages went OK for us. There were eight stages in total from which two were super specials driven in a town called Ramsey. The super special beats the h**l out of our Finnish super specials driven on a horse race track or some industrial area. Unfortunately two stages were cancelled, because of an accident. It was a stage which would have been driven twice, but because of the accident the organizer cancelled also the second round. I got to practice reading the notes in English anyhow. It took a lot of brain capacity from me since I had to think more about the notes I'm reading and also since I had to concentrate more on pronouncing the words also. In Finnish rallies it's easier since you process the infor from your note book much more automatically. On the the stages we had a couple of small moments. On one stage the road was so narrow that by just simply turning left in a junction we scraped the rear end of the car in some stone which has had to be more out of the stone wall than others. In the night service we realized the stone had actually scraped everything else, but the driver's door. In the end of one stage we clipped the front wheel to something a little bit and had a puncture. Luckily it was right in the end of a stage and we could change the tyre on a road section. In the night service I helped a little bit by taking of the wheels and light pods. Other than that I tried to stay out of the way so that our mechanics Keith and Vaughan could concentrate on working and not explaining to me how I could help. We managed to get to bed around 1am. A long day.


Night service




A stone scraped driver's side a little bit.

After five hours of sleep it was time to get back to service park. On Friday it had been dry, but on Saturday it was raining like cats and dogs. Naturally we opted for wet tyres. On Saturday we continued with the same rhythm as on Friday. After the first loop we decided to put slicks instead of wet tyres since we would drive the same set of stages again and they seemed to be getting dryer. It's a funny feeling when you are leaving the service with slicks and suddenly there is raining hailstones. 5 miles later on the stages there was almost dry roads as we hoped. The micro climate on Isle of Man is something that you have to see for yourself. I had read about it, but you have to see it to believe it...

Here are a couple of onboard clips from Saturday's stages
Druidale
Greg-ny-Bar


Stage was delayed and waiting in a queue. The scenery is vey different compared to Finland.
So is the road surface.

 After about 180 special stage kilometres we got to the finish. On the IoM I managed to see all kinds of tarmac roads: narrow, wide, fast, slow, smooth, bumpy, dry, wet, muddy. We had been climbing in the class standings little by little and actually after the last stage secured a class victory. The class victory was nice, but the main thing was how everybody made me feel welcome. Of course Malcolm and the rest of the team made the weekend really easy for since I didn't have to worry so much about all the responcibilites I normally carry during the rally weekend. Outside of our team the other competitors and organizers were really friendly and helped to easy my stress levels by enabling me to spend some time talking bs between the stages.

Here is a review of the rally by Special Stage Manx National Rally review We also got our 3 seconds of fame in the review.

Hopefully I have a chance in the future to do more rallies abroad. For this year the schedule starts to be quite booked with the Finnish rallies. Finnish rally championship continues in Laihia in the midde of June and the next round is in Kouvola in the middle of July. Unfortunately we have to skip Rally Finland in the end of July, but since me and Jari are fast thinkers we already have a back up plan. In Neste Rally Finland there is a popular extra class called Vetomies. It is driven during Saturday with Finnish group F cars and this year you will have a chance to drive also Ouninpohja. Since you have to enjoy rallying we go to Vetomies with a laid back attitude. I will actually co-drive for my brother Mikko in his M3 and Jari will be co-driven in his M3 by his brother Harri. In the M3s it's easy to live life according to mantra "life has to be lived sideways"! I hope I didn't misquote Ari Vatanen too badly here.