Vuokatti rally 8th of August 2015

A couple of months and the Peugeot was in a rally again. This time we were rallying in the middle of Finland in Vuokatti, Sotkamo. Finland is so long from South to North that even though I drove 577km from my home in Helsinki to Vuokatti I should have driven about 100km more to in the halfway into the most Northern part of Finland. Anyway in my eyes we were North enough. Vuokatti was me and Antton’s third rally together and we were determined to see the finish line this time. I personally had three retirements in a row so seeing the finish line would be a luxury.

Scrutineering in Vuokatti. Peugeot looking like a car again :)

The rally ended up being a short one once again. No we didn’t retire luckily. The rally was supposed to be only 43km long anyway, but the two stages which were to be driven twice got into so bad condition that the organizer canceled the second one. In the end we drove something like 33 stage kilometers and finished second in our class. Nice to finish on the podium, but I felt somehow frustrated to drive 1300km just to codrive three stages.

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.