SM -Itäralli on the 13th of June 2015

One week after the big crash with Antton it was time to head to Joensuu with Jari and BMW M3. It’s always nice to go back to Joensuu where I grew up. You know the city and the stages are really nice. No luck and luck in Joensuu. We had to retire on the second stage since rear suspension mounting broke off from the chassis and the codriver’s side rear wheel was pointing outside in 45 degree angle. The part where we got lucky was that Jari managed to keep the car on the road with good reflexes and the problem wasn’t big to fix. I was feeling a bit sore here and there after the previous week’s crash so I was really happy that I didn’t have to test how it feels to crash again. Sad that we had to retire especially so early. I always love to rally on the roads in the Eastern part of Finland.

BMW with four wheel steering

Nilfisk rally 6th of June 2015

Rally season continued in June. Nilfisk rally on the 6th of June was our first junior championship rally together with Antton. The plan was to start aggressively and not to lift in every corner. Of course there is some risk involved when you do this without pace notes. 3 kilometers into the first stage and we rolled spectacularly. We were bouncing against the limiter around 155km/h towards an easy left hander. We dropped the speed maybe 20km/h or something. When we got into the beginning of the corner we could see past the bushes in the inside of a corner. The corner tightened. Not much we could do except throw the car sideways. All the credit to Antton that he managed to react and act. With 2okm/h less speed we might have had a chance to make it.

You always wonder how much your brain has time to process in a situation like this. I thought before we started rolling that we are lucky since there is just a field on the outside corner. During the rolling I thought that it must be already our fourth roll, but then just thought I must be imagining it and maybe it’s the third. We ended up rolling the car 5,5 times and it actually rolled back onto the road.

Crash filmed by Juuso Jalovaara

After all the cars had passed we pushed the car onto the trailer. Pushed? Yes. The car rolled quite softly. Of course all the panels were dented and all the glasses broken, but other than that the Peugeot was in quite god condition. Only one rear damper and one tyre was broken. The scrutineering chief made an accident report of the car and thoroughly checked the car and our safety equipment. Everything was in OK condition. All the credit to Peugeot engineers and safety equipment manufacturers.

A sad looking Peugeot

Me and Antton went to see the rally doctor to get a checkup. We were feeling quite OK, but just in case something turned up a couple days later we wanted to make sure we wouldn’t have a fight with the insurance company people. I ended up with small bruises all over the body and a read eye, but no sore neck or anything like that. It helped a lot that the car just rolled and didn’t suddenly stop to a tree or something.

Kaloppi –ralli 16th of May 2015

Something different. Codriving for Antton Laurén in his Peugeot 208 R2 in a rally which is driven without pace notes. Using just the road book in which the organizer has marked the surprising corners or dangerous places. Otherwise just scanning the road and trying to guess where the road turns and how hard.

There are only three rallies left in the Finnish rally championship. And since Jari wans’t planning on driving any other rallies as practice I have time to kill. Antton was looking for a codriver for the Finnish junior rally championship + some practice rallies. The two series don’t have conflicting schedules so I decided to jump in.

Scrutineering before the start

The rally went well. It’s a really nice car and Antton drives fluently so as a codriver I had really nice time. Of course it felt strange not to have pace notes. Last time I did one of these “blind” rallies was about 2,5 years ago so I wasn’t really in my comfort zone. Well you get used to it.

Road section. All of  them were quite short.

The stages were really nice with one exception. Fourth stage was on a small road and we were driving on number 145. There were deep ruts and in a couple of places Antton had to lift the car from the ruts so that we wouldn’t lose our front bumper. Unfotunately we suffered a puncture 3km before the end of the stage and had to limb to the finish. We lost about 1,5min and the battle for class victory ended there. Since there was only one stage left to go and we had driven enough training kilometers we decided to call it a day. We changed the wheel and drove back to rally headquarters. All in all it was a good day. Since Kaloppi wasn’t a junior championship rally the only aim was to get training kilometers. In that we succeeded and Antton was happy with the car setup.

Can't sell this tyre or use it in testing

Next rally is on the 6th of June in Oripää with Antton&Peugeot without pace notes and one week after that I’m driving with Jari&BMW with pace notes.

Arctic Lapland Rally 2015

The Arctic Lapland Rally didn't go as planned with the E36.

The recce was full of peaceful scenery as always. I has even managed to get into the celebration year exhibition with Andreas.

Beautiful

We were taking it easy on Friday. However the car in front of us had spun on a narrow road and blocked the road. We lost 3 minutes helping to lift it out of the snow bank with a couple of other crews. He spun again 1,5km later. This time there luckily was a 1 meter gap between it and the snow bank. We aimed the E36 towards the snow bank and the gap at about 80km/h. Luckily didn't get stuck and only lightly scraped the car blocking the road. Others followed through the whole we made. Still finished the day only 2,5min after the class leader.

Waiting for the start

Waiting for the Mäntyvaara super special

On the Mäntyvaara super special

In the queue for the special stage

Rally glamour. Cold and dark rally car. Wearing a pink blanket.

We started the second day with good spririts, but only 6km from the start the rear bottomed out when crossing a bridge about 130km/h. A rear brake line got caught between the suspension arm and the chassis leaking all the fluids. We drove the rest of the stage (30km) without brakes. Managed to hit 190km/h on the faster sections since there you don't need the brakes anyway. The twisty bits weren't so much fun... Had to retire since there was still a 38km stage left before service break.

2015 season

"Life is meant to be lived sideways" - Dalai Lala. Of course it was Ari Vatanen who said that, but would be cool if the spiritual leader of Tibet would have said that.

So no more 4wd for Jari and me next season for two reasons. 1) Money. It's really expensive to run a 4wd car. Hardly a surprise for anyone. 2) Finnish national homologation for 2015. What is that? It means that it's now possible to apply for a homologation for a car that fits inside the technical rules of the class where it will compete. No special limited edition models so has to have 4 seats originally and a production run minimum 2500pcs.

Mitsubishi was sold and as a trade in Jari took a BMW M3 E36. A familiar car for Jari since he used to drive one before switching to 4wd. We'll be driving the car in the season start Arctic Lapland Rally on the 23-24 of January. The 50th anniversary rally and 290km of special stages. That's about the same as WRC rally Finland. Except no stage is run twice and the longest is 50km long. One thing is for sure. There is going to be some nice slides when the rear tyres search for grip on the snow and ice.

BMW M3

After the first rally there is hope that we'll be running an all new car in Finnish rallies. Jari is building a BMW 125 coupe (E82) and thus utilizing the possibility of national homologation.. That's going to be a beautiful car. I'm pretty sure it will also provide some nice slides for the spectators.

BMW 125 coupe. By the way notice the new blue colour scheme for next season

Pohjanmaa rally 14th of June, Lapua

Pohjanmaa was the first rally on gravel in the championship. To be honest I wasn't looking forward to it too much. Traditionally the roads in Pohjanmaa have been straight, flat and fast. Long straights and 90 degree junctions in the end. This time fortunately I have to admit that I was wrong. During the recce we found out that there were some really nice stages which turned somewhere all the time. The fast part was still true and this meant that the roads were actually quite challenging.

We started the rally as usual. Finding our own pace since we only had done about 20km of testing and the road we used was much more technical than the fast roads in Pohjanmaa. Nevertheless the first two stages before service felt OK. Playing it safe, but still with OK pace. When queuing to service we were surprised when some of our competitors commented that we have obviously been pushing hard. We asked that what did they meant since we hadn't even bothered to check the results yet and were planing to have look at them at the service. People said that we were actually fourth in class before first service. This of course was great news. Jari has a really smooth driving style and he isn't afraid of really high speeds so these things combined meant that our position was really good. In the incar from the first stage you can see how fast the roads were in some parts. On the almost straight section our car achieved 212km/h according the organizers GPS tracking unit.
Kihlman/Heikkinen Pohjanmaa stage 1

After the service we kept the the same pace and arrived to service at the same fourth place. After the service the stages 5 and 6 were the same stages (numbers 1 and 2) from the morning and those run for the second time. A couple of kilometers after the start of the fifth stage I noticed that Jari had decided to push on this one. Nothing stupid, but I could see that we are driving on the car's and tyres' limits without taking stupid risks. At this point I also made my note reading more aggressive sounding to match Jari's effort level. The result was excellent. Were third fastest on that stage losing only 0,1seconds to Karl Kruuda on his S2000 Fiesta and losing 10 seconds to Jarkko Nikara who really was flying through that 20km stage. This time the GPS tracker hit 216km/h on the fast section.

GPS tracker recorded 216km/h on the fifth stage

On the last stage we started by keeping the same fast rhythm as on the fifth stage. Not far away from the start we saw that Nikara had rolled his car and decided to ease off and play it safe. Never a good idea to crash on the last stage. After Nikara's crash we moved up one place and finished the personal best for both of us with a 4wd car -> third in class! For both of us it felt like victory since we hadn't done much testing before the rally and hadn't really pushed except on one stage.

Picture from rallism.fi and taken by Toni Ollikainen

Now it's again a long pause of 2,5 months before the next FRC round in the end of August in Turku. The plan is to do a little bit of pace note training, work on my hobby cars and just relax during the summer.

Winter season 2014

IT has been a long time since I last wrote to the blog. My excuse is that I became a dad and it has taken a lot of time to learn how to be a good one. Also I usually write my blog during the weekends and I haven't had many spare ones during the winter. Between January 18th and March 8 I had only one weekend of without rallies, weddings, bachelor parties or something other than just sitting on my sofa at home. I felt a bit knackered around middle of March.

But back to business. For this season we changed the car to run on bioethanol which is around 103 octane fuel sold in Finland. The good thing about the fuel is that you'll get 50-100nm  more torque with it. The downsides being that the car doesn't start very well when it's really cold during the winter and the fuel consumption grows about 30%.

Unfortunately the first rally of the season didn't go too well. In the Arctic Lapland Rally we flipped the car on it's side on top of a snow bank on the fifth stage. Not that much damage to the car, but we retired since we lost a lot of time. Where weren't any people in the middle of the forest to flip us back to wheels. For some reason the Arctic Rally seems to haunt me. I have been there three times. On the first time with Andreas in the R2 Fiesta we repaired the car 10 minutes on a stage and after that we have flipped the Evo 9 two times on top of a snowbank with Jari. Still I like it as a rally since it's a proper rally with a lot of stage kilometers.

Walking of to the sunset in Lapland...

Second rally of the season was in Mikkeli as usual. Roads in Mikkeli have usually suited Jari very well since he likes fast stages and he also has a really smooth driving style. Even though we had some problems on the last stage when we practically lost all the brakes 10km before the end we finished 4th in SM1 class. Luckily the last stage was really fast and wide so Jari could keep decent pace by paying attention to having smooth lines through corners.

New colours in the car. White and blue has changed into white and black.

Joensuu was the last rally of the winter season. Or more appropriately the first rally of the summer season? Snow was almost nowhere to be found and sometimes we were driving on gravel or slush. First two stages were the most demanding ones. The first one we took on the safe side since on the slush you don't have much grip and even the winter studs are aquaplaning. For the second one we thought about upping the pace, but after a couple of kilometers there were already two 4wd cars off the road. After that we decided to play it safe. For the rest of the day we kept our pace, but stayed on our comfort zone. In the finish we were comfortably sixth.

No snow or rear bumper. We didn't really hit anything, but the bumpers liked to fall off the car in Joensuu

Now waiting for the summer season which starts in Lapua on the 14th of June. After that it's again 2,5 months of waiting until the next FRC round in the autumn. Next year we'll propably drive more rallies to keep up the routine. This year I don't mind the more leisurely schedule since I'll be able to pass the time by relaxing at the summer cottage, with diaper duty and changing an engine to my hobby car.

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.

Vetomies -rally 3rd of August, Jyväskylä

Neste Rally Finland, The Finnish Grand Prix. So what does Vetomieshave to do with it? During some of the years there has been an extra class after the Neste Rally cars. In that class the competitors drive with Finnish 2wd group F cars which have outdated homologation.For example BMW M3, Toyota Corolla GT, Opel Astra, Ford Escortetc etc. This year we participated to the class with my brother Mikkoin his BMW M3. Jari also took part with his brother in their M3. In the middle of Finnish rally championship this was an opportunity to just enjoy the rallying how it’ meant to be done. Sideways :) TheVetomies –rally was done on Saturday and we drove stages Surkee,Leustu, Ouninpohja and Painaa after the big boys had done the stages for the first time. It was really great to be part of the WRC round  atmosphere. Since we haven’t done that many rallies with my brother anymore I was really looking forward to doing one rally with him. Just like back in the day. A BMW, Mikko driving and me co-driving.

The recce was one weekend on a Saturday. Actually a couple of days earlier than even the WRC guys get to do the recce. Maybe the organizers didn’t want them to be in our way during the recce :D We managed to make good pace notes even though Mikko hasn’t done notes in a long time and usually doesn’t do pace note rallies.

Next Friday it was time to get back to Jyväskylä. To kill the time me, Mikko and a couple of our friends went to see Lankamaa stage. After the stage me and Mikko headed towards Kangasniemi to spend thenight. Next morning it was all rally glamour. Wake up at 5am and on the road around 5h45. 

Around 7am we were ready at Paviljonki for paper check and scrutineering. The whole atmosphere was really relaxed since probably 90% of the crews were there just to enjoy themselves.

The Vetomies rally usually has a really high retiring rate and that was wise to keep in mind. Around 11am it was our time to head towards the stages. The Surkee stage was familiar to me from last year. The stage was luckily in quite good shape after the WRC guys. We took it steadily trying not to damage the car. Mikko was also learning how to concentrate on listening to the pace notes. Our tactic was to avoid any damage to the car so that we could enjoy the famousOuninpohja stage. After Surkee we continued through Leustu with the same strategy. One of the Leustu junctions was so soft that we almost got stuck with the heavy rwd BMW.

After Leustu there was a short service break on a road section. We checked the car and didn’t even change the tyres. No fluids or anything needed either. Everything was OK and we just ate and drank a little bit to keep energy levels up. We hadn't even expected any problems. Mikko's trusted mechanic Teuvo was enjoying the rally as a spectator and our dad was the only mechanic we had with us. Even a couple of spectators came to the car laughing and commenting that there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the car since everybody is just talking bs and eating. The Ouninpohja stage started very well. Mikko had better gotten used listening the pace notes and since the stage was in great condition he could push the car without having to worry about it getting broken.

When reaching the famous Kakaristo junction after over 20km we were inside the top ten according to the gps tracker that was installed inside all the cars. About 700m everything went wrong. The organizers had built a jump for Tommi Mäkinen’s VIP people and we landed heavily nose first. Several cars broke in that artificial jump and we were no exception. The landing had damaged our oil cooler which had ripped of the radiator from its mountings. About 3km after the jump on the so called Ouninpohja small road our engine seized. End of our rally. 

Unfortunately we also had to wait for several hours for the WRC guys to drive the stage for the second time. The organizers driving through the stage were really cool and stopped at our spot to ask if we were alright and if we needed anything. Even though we had drinking water the supplied us a couple of liters more. A big thank you for that for those guys. Very friendly. Our car wasn’t blocking the road, but it was on the outside corner where the WRC cars would throw a lot of stones. We tried to clean all the bigger stones after a car had passed, but unfortunately Kris Meeke dropped the driver’s side window with one stone. Kris himself wasn’t too lucky either crashing his car about 3km later. A shame since we was driving a great rally with a factory Citroën. Even though we didn’t finish the rally and broke the BMW’s engine we were quite happy. The setup of the car is pretty much spot on and since the Ouninpohja had gone so well the broken engine isn’t the end of the world.

SM O.K Auto -ralli, Kouvola

After Laihia I was really looking forward to Kouvola. In Kouvola the stages have been similar as in Joensuu which means going up or down or turning almost all the time. Proper fun. OK I admit that most parts the stages in Laihia were nice, not like the highways in Lapua in 2011&2012. When we started the recce it turned out the organizers had included a couple of new stages which would be driven twice. Excellent news except the stages looked a lot like in Lapua the past years. Pretty flat roads between farms. Not like the usual roller coasters of Kouvola. Last two stages were familiar stages from past years and they were excellent in my opinion.

Since Laihia didn’t go at all like we had planned this rally was a bit like a second start for our summer season. The first three stages went OK with our normal speed. We were 8th on all the stages losing about 1-1,5 sek/km to the old WRC cars and fin-r cars in the front. It was good the see that the tyres and the car worked on those three stages. This way we could get the monkey off our backs after Laihia.

After service we did the same three stages again. On this loop we were constant with our performance again. Now being 7th on all the stages.

After these three new stages we headed towards two more familiar stages from previous years. Especially the second one of these two stages was nice to read as a co-driver. The stage was quite fast and you had to change the rhythm a couple of times. Enjoyable and keeps you awake as a co-driver. As an extra challenge the brake pedal went a bit soft in the end of the stage so Jari got more exercise when pumping the brakes. We were again 7th on both stages.

The very last stage was a 1km super special on Tykkimäki rally cross track. Want to guess our position? Yep, 7th again. After the finish we (us and three other competitors) had the privilege of being invited to after rally scrutineering. The organizers wanted to inspect turbos and see connecting rods. Well nothing to be found there. In Finland you are driving with a group N car against the more freely tunable(engine, bodywork, suspension) fin-R and R4 cars. You would have to“missing a couple of Indians from the canoe” if you were stupid enough to enter your car to the rally as an illegal group N car when you can enter it under fin-R regulations.

SM-Pohjanmaa ralli 15th of June 2013

This season's winter rallies are over and it was time to get back to gravel. This year the waiting wasn't so bad since I managed to co-drive on Isle of Man. I also sold my summer car and had to find another in a bit of a hurry. For those who don't know the Finnish summer is short and if you want to have a convertible you have to act fast to be able to drive it even a litte bit.

The summer part of the season started from Laihia in the western part or Finland. I haven't been a big fan of the area based on two previous years' experiences in Lapua. The roads were really really fast and not that challenging. Laihia luckily turned out to be different. The organizer had managed to find more driveable roads. Now that the roads weren't a problem we in return had other issues. More than one.

The recce went OK. Easy recce since two stages were run twice so you basically had about 60km to put on paper. No sweat. Plenty of time to eat during the recce and bs with other crews. The problems started in the Friday evening scrutineering. For some reason all the cars (at least the crews we discussed with) got 10db higher readings from the sound measurement than normally. Since we are usually at the limit we had difficulties getting the car through. Luckily we weren't the only ones so the issue wasn't fully about the car. Well this was a minor nuisance.

During the scrutineering we had a couple of alarming discussions about tyres. We have been running Pirelli's throughout the season. Good tyres and I have nothing bad to say about them. This time we had K4s with us and they are designed to +20 celcius temperatures. We were looking at +15 for the event and we were warned the tyres wouldn't heat up enough. I wasn't too concerned since last year with Michelin's medium compound you could run also with a bit colder temperatures. Oh boy the people warning us were right. We put the two softer K6s in the front so that we could at least turn the car if the K4s would be as slippy as everybody warned us. They were. It was like trying to drive a shopping cart with stearable front wheels through the stages. No matter how carefully Jari was driving the rear was trying to overtake us all the time. Looking from the co-driver's seat the amount of work Jari had to do was frustrating to watch. Obviously even more frustrating for him. Now we learned a lesson about the tyres.

Another issue was a lack of power. For some reason there are now ponies missing from the engine and we'll take the car to a dyno to find a reason. With the right tyres and with the normal power the next round will hopefully be easier for us. Would be nice to get a trouble free rally since the roads in Kouvola area are really challenging and require all the concentration available if you want to have times near the front runners.

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.

Something different...

People sometimes get bored. I was a bit bored during the winter break between last rally of 2012 and first rally of 2013. Few of months of not rallying can get to you. When we finished the last rally of winter season in the beginning of March I was facing potential boredom since the first rally of summer season is in the middle of June. It doesn't help much if there is one rally in the middle of May for gravel testing. That's two and a half months. Getting bored is a real risk. So I started to think. This is something I'm not supposed to do since my girlfriend says I'll get ideas. And that's exactly what happened.

So one day I realised that I have always wanted to do a tarmac rally. And since we don't have those in Finland and many Finnish drivers don't go to abroad to drive tarmac rallies I would need a driver to take me as a co-driver. And since not very many foreign drivers speak Finnish I would have to read the pace notes in English. This needed some serious thinking. So after two hours I had made my mind and posted adverts on rally forums.

I posted an advert on British, French, Belgian and German rally forums saying that I was looking for a co-driver's seat on a tarmac rally. First of all I got a lot of encouraging messages from people wishing me luck on finding a seat. To cut a long story short I managed to find a seat through the British forum. Best of all in my books it wasn't just some tarmac rally. I would get to read notes on the legendary Isle of Man in the Manx National rally . Manx wasn't originally on a NEAFP list for foreigners to take part, but the organizers were 130% supportive to enable my entry. Nothing else to say that I can't thank them enough for their help. For me Manx is a bit special. I guess many have seen this clip of Ari Vatanen having a close call in Manx Ari Vatanen, Opel Manta . Since I was two years old in 1983 I have spend more time watching videos, DVDs and clips from the F2 era in the British championship. Those cars on tarmac were just awesome 1999 British tarmac rallies .

The brave soul to give me a ride in his Subaru Impreza is Malcolm Mawdsley from Activ8motorsport activ8motorsport . So on the 10-11th of May I'll be in an Impreza, on Isle of Man, reading pace notes in English (numeric not decriptive as in Finland), 120 miles of special stages on tarmac. On top of that two weeks later is Ovisepät rally in Finland to get gravel experience on Jari's evo 9. So chances are I don't get bored before the next FRC round in the middle of June. The chances of me not getting bored are actually really good.

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.