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

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.

FRC Mikkeli 2015

Otherwise a nice event with good stages. Except the very mild winter caused the roads to cave in and on some stages the driving was more surviving than rally driving. Couldn't complain in the finish though. We won our class. Had a good fift in the end. The last stage was cancelled. We were leading by 4,7 seconds before the now to be last the stage. We also told to the crew who was second in the class that this would now be the last stage and class victory would be decided on this one. We both drove flat out and we managed to beat them on that stage by 4 seconds. Nice to have a good result after the Arctic retirement.

Waiting for the rally to start next to Mikkeli market square

Waiting for the last stage to start. The front bumper has taken its toll on rough roads.

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.

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.

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.

Personalized suits and helmets

Since fashion blogs are very popular I thought that I should write about suits and helmets. Maybe I'll get another segment of readers than just rally fans by writing about clothes and stuff :)


During my time in rallying I have sometimes wondered about the mismatch between the high level of cars and the low level of helmets&suits people use. Many times you see top of the line cars with Motec engine management, Reiger suspension, best engines money can buy etc. Then you see the driver wearing a 5 year old helmet and a suit that would fit more to garage working than driving the car. Both the helmet
and the suit not the best available to begin with. If you ever ask about the suit or the helmet the answer usually is that "they are expensive". I understand lower requirements on the driving equipment
if you have a tight budget as a regular Joe and driving as a hobby every now and then. But when you have a 30 000 – 200 000 eur car and spend 15 000 – 100 000 every year for driving the season then does the
extra 1 000 eur for upgrading the helmet and the suit really matter? Might even look better in the eyes of the current and potential sponsors.

As a co-driver life is easier for me since I don't have to buy the car, tires, maintenance, service trucks etc. On my seat you also notice the difference of the equipment. You get what you pay for. Item by item I
have increased the quality of products that I use. For last season I upgraded my suit and later in the season also my helmet.

I spent a lot of time searching in the internet for different suits by different manufacturers. I ended up with a suit from MIR Raceline in Italy. The manufacturer is more known from karting, but makes also rally, rallycross and racing suits with the latest FIA standards. The pricing for a custom made suit with requested colours and embroidering was the best I could find. I personally like to pay for a product and not the brand so that's why I didn't immediately go for the more known Sparco/OMP/Alpinestars brands and end up paying for the brand and not the product. Especially the embroidering was important for me since the thread needs to be fire proof material and only penetrate the outer layer of the suit. Quite a hassle trying to
get the sponsor logos to a standard suit after it has been manufactured. Also in the scrutineering  the officials quickly see that everything is factory made and don't have to spend their time too much checking the suit in detail. When using better driving gear few things really are obvious. For starters the underwear with good design and cutting helps you not noticing that you are wearing them. With the actual suit one thing you immediately notice is the weight. The ones in the higher end of the spectrum are much lighter than the cheap ones. No surprises in the previous points. However one thing that surprised me with the MIR suit was the "shining fabric" that I ordered the suit with. Like the name says the fabric really stands out against the normal racing suit fabrics by being shiny. The surprising thing was that it doesn't seem to get shabby so fast as the normal fabrics in racing suits. I have used my suit in testing and races for one year now and usually the suits start to show wear and tear at this point. Especially on the thigh area where I always support the pace note book. This fabric has really stood well against use and looks like brand new.

Before Neste Rally Finland I also decided to change my helmet. I had been really happy using my Peltor G78 which is already a good helmet, but a couple of things had started to annoy me little by little. The
main thing was the microphone boom. With the Peltor boom you always have to be careful not the get it tangled somewhere and always adjust it to its place before the stage. The boom position is especially
annoying if the driver's boom accidentally switches place and you have to listen to heavy breathing on the stage. Makes you feel like you are in a porn movie and if its not extremely disturbing you don't want to
ask the driver to adjust his boom on the stage and momentarily break his concentration :) The other little thing with the Peltor helmet was that even the never G79 model didn't seem to move the game forwards like the best brands always should. I had gotten used to thinking that Peltor is one of the best, but the G79 to my eyes seemed to offer exactly the same as G78. Except in an uglier package. The beauty of design is purely my personal opinion. So I ended up buying a Stilo WRC DES helmet. I like the fixed microphone boom which is integrated to the helmet structure, the good fit when wearing it and the fact that I think it's a good looking helmet. Since my aim is to use the helmet for a long time I started to think about getting a personalized paint job for it. Painting a helmet pretty much eliminates the possibility of selling it unless I suddenly would become world famous... Again the usual internet search: who paints helmets, where and for how much? With this field I also asked experiences from friends. I ended up sending the helmet to Gerard Mariaud in Joutseno. He has been painting everything from motorcycles to helmets for years and years. Again the price also played a significant part. The price spectrum ranging between 200 and 1 000 euros between different painters.

Deciding the design was more difficult. I wanted the helmet to be personal. I went through different designs and figured out what would suit me and in which colour. In the end I figured out the design all by myself. For main colour I chose pearl white. White goes with anything you know. All the graphs would be in black. So a simple black and white helmet. Except that the design isn't what you would call normal. I have Michelin gravel tyre pattern going over the helmet from front to back.

On the right side of the helmet I have a quote from my rally idol Henri Toivonen "The time is not the problem, but my heart you know" If I'm not mistaking it was Henri's comment in an interview during one rally when he was competing against faster 4wd Audi of Michèle Mouton with his 2wd Opel. Anyway it's just something that stuck into my mind when watching Henri Toivonen tribute video over and over again as a kid.

On the left side I have a quote in Finnish from a famous Finnish ski jumper Matti Nykänen. Loosely translated as "Life is human being's best time". Simple but true and one should always remember to live life to the fullest. On the left side I also have a Finnish comic pig Wagner, but I'm playing it safe with the copyright laws and I have blurred Wagner from this picture in the internet.  For those who are not familiar with the pig in question it's Finland's most popular comic and is published in Finland's biggest newspaper Helsingin Sanomat. Wagner is sometimes totally inconsiderate, sometimes very thoughtful, sometimes very simple, sometimes very philosophical. Basically full of contradictions. For some reason I have always felt him as a kindred spirit...

One more quote from the movie Forest Gump to end these thoughts about suits and helmets -> "That's all I have to say about that".

Physical tests in Vierumäki 21-22th of October

I have mentioned earlier about belonging to the rally training. In October it was time to the bi-annual physical tests in Vierumäki sports training center. The Sports Institute of Finland supports professional sports and Vierumäki is the place where it's easy to test athletes.

The two days basically held rowing with a gas a mask on until you drop and the normal push ups etc other physical tests. In addition to tests everybody had discussions with the coaches about the past year in general and about the plans for the 2012 season.

The two days basically started with the rowing test. There you sit on the normal rowing machine. In addition to that you get a mask(think fighter pilots mask and you get the picture) on your face with a tube going to a machine which analyzes your exhaling gases and calculates how well your body can utilize oxygen. In rallying the physical fitness helps on long stages and on rallies lasting several days. The test itself was as fun as you can imagine. You row all the time except every three minutes the pace is lifted to a higher level and somebody takes a blood sample from your finger. You continue this as long you can...

When you are waiting for your turn to the rowing tests everybody had their session with the coaches. You went through the physical training programs, but also the rally training part. Basically a summary of the year. What went well, what needs improving, how do you see different aspects of the sport, what are the plans for the next season etc. It's good to have that kind of talks so you'll get different views on the topics.

On Saturday we had the more common physical tests including push ups, abs etc. On the afternoon we went through the results, then basically packed our bags and went home. The test weekend effectively ended my 2011 season, but of course the work for 2012 is going on all the time. No major secrets regarding the next season, but still not the time to reveal the plans yet either. I'll write about the plans sometime in December.

Volunteer work as a marshal in Teijo-Talot rally 1st of October 2011

Everybody knows that you need a lot of volunteers dedicating their time as officials, marshals and doing whatever to arrange a rally. I try to do my bit from time to time to ease my conscience. My motoring club called once again and since I had declined twice(I was co-driving in both rallies) already this year thought there wasn't any "excuses" to not help out. I co-drive in a lot of rallies and even though it seems that spare time is a luxury nowadays I still try to help even sometimes. In a way the safety car trip in September was this kind of help, but since it's almost like rallying I don't consider it as a chore. Being a marshal and keeping an eye on some junction to make sure nobody enters the special stage is more like a chore. That was something I was doing on Teijo-Talot rally.

Luckily the weather was good and I could also see the cars for a long time. Only a handful of spectators in my junction so I could also relax and focus on the cars.  There was even one sierra among the cars. A rarity especially compared to the huge amount of mk2 escorts in every Finnish rally.

Co-drivers. Those guys filling the extra seat next to the driver...

So what are those co-driver guys doing? Aren't they just filling the vacant seat just because the regulations in rallying say there has to be two people in the car? Well the regulations do say there has to be two people in the car, but there is more than that.

Thinking from a perspective that you race as a hobby. Even as a hobby the co-driver usually is responsible for the following tasks:

Before the rally:
- Plan with the driver/team which rallies to participate
- Enter the team to the rally, pay the entering fee to the organizers
- Read the rally rules carefully in case of some special features unique to the rally, inform others in the team
- Plan the schedule for the event, who goes where and when
- Calculate fuel consumption for the rally car
- Reserve accommodation for the team. Make sure there is enough parking space for the truck/trailer. 
-Check that you have your personal equipment, suit, helmet, maps, pace note books, pens, watches, incar camera, batteries, flashlight, electrical tape or similar and so on...
- Check the weather and plan accordingly. Will the sun be shining, will there be rain, is it going to be -30 Celsius. If you retire on a stage would be good to have a rain coat if it's raining or something warm to wear if it's freezing. Notify others in the team what kind of weather to expect during the rally.

During recce:
- Make sure you have something to eat and drink in the car if the recce schedule is going to be tight. Keep the energy levels up for the duration of the day.
- Keep the driver aware that you have everything under control. Helps to keep the driver concentrating the subject at hand -> making the pace notes.
- Comment the pace notes if there is a place you might not fully agree. Discussion is OK, but the driver makes the final call for the notes.
- Check the pace notes at the hotel after the recce. Clean them if necessary so that they are easy to read during the rally.

During rally day:
-KEEP THE DRIVER CALM AT ALL TIMES! Of course drivers are individuals, but in most cases they have a tendency to have ants in their pants before the start. Even if they look calm they might be like a duck on a pond. On the surface everything is calm, but below the surface the  flippers are working like crazy. Co-drivers job is to be the guy who keeps the general atmosphere in control at all times.
- Double check your watches are on correct time.
- Double check you are everywhere in the right time. Being early or late for time control and getting penalized is a sure way to flush the rally down the toilet. Organizers mark these times to a time card which is with the car crew at all times during the rally. Co-driver calculates the times for each time control points and makes sure to get there during the correct minute.
- Instruct the driver to the start, stages, services, finish. People in many times think that this is done by using a map, but actually the organizers have provided very detailed road books where all the relevant junctions, road signs and  distances are marked.
- At the start of the stage start the stopwatch so that you can check after the stage that the people in time control mark the correct time on your time card for the special stage. If the time is wrong make a formal objection immediately otherwise your stuck with the incorrect time without the possibility to appeal.
- Start the incar/onboard camera to get something to watch at home or to put into the internet.
- Read the pace notes to the driver. Generally everybody thinks it's OK for the driver to make an error and crash the car, but co-drivers are expected not to make mistakes when reading the pace notes to the driver. If you're not 100% sure you are reading the correct note notify the driver IMMEDIATELY since his supposed to trust that the bend is exactly the one you are reading to him.


Above there are already a couple of tasks for the co-driver and this is just a point when your having a laugh with your friends during the weekend and enjoying rallying. Added to this all the work the driver and the mechanics do...