SM Castrol rally 27th-28th of September, Tampere

Tampere was the final round of Finnish rally championship. A short list of things that made it a bit special compared to some of the other rallies: it’s the final round of the championship, Jari lives in Tampere so it’s his home rally, the service park was located in Särkänniemi amusement park, only 1h40min drive to Tampere for me through motorway from Helsinki and in Tampere area the stages are usually great.

 

Since it was Jari’s home rally we had a chance of having a small warm up test on Thursday evening. That helped to get into rally feeling when driving in the darkness. When picking up the paper work next morning we noticed that all of the stages were old Rally Finland stages from the 80’s and 90’s so for sure we were in for a treat. After doing the pace notes for last stage called Pengonpohja Jari made a good analysis of the stage -> If a codriver has “a timing problem in his engine” then there is a need for a new chassis for the rally car after this stage”. I agreed with his analysis. Pengonpohja is a great stage which turns and goes up and down all the time.

 

First two stages were driven already on Friday evening. Actually it was the legendary Savo stage which was to be driven twice. First during the daylight and a couple of hours later when we it was dark. We took it with normal pace on both times and the times were good. We were 7th overall, but in the lead wereNikara and Kruuda both with S2000 cars. Among the normal guys driving the whole series we were 5th. So not bad at all.

The morning didn’t start well for us. Jari didn’t find a good rhythm on the really fast Siikama stage and we dropped to ninth. All the stages on Saturday were to be driven twice. The same phenomenon occurred on the first loop and on the second loop. Siikama didn’t go well on either times. After Siikama wasViitapohja and on both times we liked the stage a lot. After Viitapohja was Pengonpohja and on both times after Pengonpohja we were both ecstatic. Have to say that the stage is probably the second greatest stage I have seen. Ouninpohja still being the greatest. Those two stages can’t really really be compared since Ouninpohja is wider road and faster. Anyhow a great stage to end our championship. We ended up 6th in the championship and luckily my mistake in Turku didn’t matter in the standings.

 

This is the time to thank our sponsors for the season. Like always without whom the season wouldn’t have been possible. Big thank you for our mechanics for keeping the car in order and the sprits high throughout the season. After all this is a team sport. Also from my part thanks for Jari. We had a fun season and it’s easy to continue the cooperation for 2014. Our plans aren’t a big secret. The Finnish 4wd class will be divided into two classes. Our plan is to fight in the SM1 –class among the big boys. The class allows quite free modifications to group N cars. We’ll probably just tune the engine a bit, but otherwise keep the car as it is. As usual the season starts with the legendary Arctic Lapland Rally inRovaniemi. So that I wouldn’t keep a three month radio silence from writing a blog I’ll think of something to write about every now and then.

SM ralli Turku 30th-31st of August

After Vetomies –rally with my brother it was time to get back to my normal seat in Jari’s evo. I had never been rallying in Turku area so I didn’t really know what to expect. I expected the roads to mostly flat. I wasn’t exactly 100% right on that one. During recce we found out some of the stages to even have some hills erc. We arrived to Turku on Thursday to pick up the recce material. There were two stages already on Friday evening so the recce started early on Friday morning.

 

Nothing special during the recce. Only nuisance was that the Friday’s stages were quite far from Turku and Saturday’s stages on whole different direction. So during the recce you just had to travel between the stages a bit more than you would have wanted.

 

Then to the actual rally. Well to put it mildly. Friday was a catastrophe. At least we didn’t wreck the car. So what happened? First of all Jari dropped his classes. He can see pretty well without them, but when you are driving long in the dark and long distances it would have helped to have them. So we took some beating on the stages. That was a minor problem compared to what I managed to do. Something you never do as a co-driver. Never ever. I handed the timecard during the previous minute in the start of SS2. Voilá a one minute penalty! I´ve been through the incident in my head a few hundred times and it comes to a conclusion that I just lost concentration when I was tired. SS1 had to be stopped for 20 minutes right before it was our turn to go to the stages. This of course gave us a good starting position without any dust blocking our lights in the dark. When going to the start of SS2 around 11.30pm I was feeling a bit tired (I usually go to bed around 9.30pm) and I made extra sure that we don’t end up talking bs with Jari and going late to the time control. Since there wasn’t the normal queue of cars in which it’s easy to follow when your turn is. Immediately when Jari stopped to the time control I had handed the timecard. I didn’t even realize it until Jari asked that did I just hand in the timecard. Of course it was no help trying to ask it back. Luckily I managed to pull myself together so much that I read the pace notes OK. For sure the pace notes weren't the primary thing going through my head during the stage.

Feeling not so cheerful we headed to the night service. Without my mistake we would have been  5th in overall standings. Now we were 14th. I felt like gutted. Driver can make mistakes. That’s OK. A co-driver should always be an enabler for a good result. Not a disabler. Of course everybody makes mistakes, but on our level that kind of mistakes should never happen. Forme It's a professional pride thing. During the next morning several other co-drivers approached me and told their stories when they had made the same mistake. Nice for the guys trying to cheer me up. Never the less I was still very down. When queuing for SS3 which was the first stage of the morning a big high speed crash happened for one crew some five cars in front of us. When waiting for the rescue crews to check the crew there was about 45min wait. The crew was luckily relatively unhurt, but had to go to a hospital for a thorough check up. For some reason this extra waiting news from the crew helped me to put the timecard mistake behind me and focus on the stages.

 

The two stages which were both run twice during Saturday were really nice. Stage by stage we were getting into the spirit. On the very last we really enjoyed ourselves. A very nice, long and flowing stage suited us as a crew. We also climbed the leaderboard position by position. From 14th to 6th. Without my mistake we would have been 4th. That position was only 12 seconds away. Damn… It took me about a week after the rally to not think about the mistake every day. I think it will take some time before I stop thinking about the mistake when I’m handing out the timecard. And that’s a good thing.