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.

Arctic Lapland Rally 2013

The opening round of the Finnish Rally Championship didn't go too well for me and Jari. We got stuck in the snow on the second special stage for fifteen minutes. The snow was over waist deep and it took so long to dig us out that we decided to retire and continue the next day. Unluckily we found out later in the service park that the front differential was acting funnily and it was safer not to continue the rally on the second day. Looking at the bright side of things there wasn't a single dent on the mitsubishi, because of the thick snow. Only broken parts hopefully being a damaged oil cooler and a cracked bumper. After some time with the car people wiser than me can figure out what's wrong with the diff.

On the second stage

Few hundred meters after the first picture

The week in Lapland wasn't all bad though. First of all it was nice to be back in rallies. And spending one week 3 meters from from on another in a hotel room and in a recce car you soon find out if you're going to get a long with the driver/co-driver. We had a lot of fun during the recce. The recce car basically being a center of philosophical discussions and left over jokes. Also the ~ 20 kilometers we did on the stages enforced my belief that the speed is there. Like everybody says the stopwatch tells the truth. Now waiting for   one month and the next rally in Mikkeli to find out what's the truth.

Also me and Jari ordered new really cool racing suits from MIR Raceline. Have to take photos of them in Mikkeli and in the daylight.

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".

Finnish 4wd rally cars, the future?

I know that I'm touching a sensitive subject here, but the idea is so tempting that I just can't let it pass. Could we use non-homologated cars in Finnish 4wd championship? The same goes for 2wd cars also, but in my eyes the 4wd class is more vulnerable with the already high costs and cars that are sooner or later going to meet the end of their homologation.

I read from new Hanaa! -magazine about Esapekka Lappi's rally in Spain and there it was mentioned that in Spain there is a possibility to build your own "N1" 4wd rally cars using Mitsusubishi Evo's or Subaru's mechanical parts. The suspension can be whatever and same goes for electrics. Weight of the car either 1200kg or 1300kg depending if you are using a 34mm or 36mm restrictor. Chassis has to be from a production car (I'm not interested in seeing "I did it myself group B fiberglass works of art") and you can fit a bodykit to fit the axles.

As an eternal pessimist I'm worried that the price for new R5 cars is going to be out of reach for many 4wd drivers in Finland. And I guess that goes for many other countries also. The possibility to lift the group N mechanical parts to some other car would enable having many different brands on our rally stages which otherwise would never show up to Finnish rallying. All you need is a cheap chassis donor car from Germany or one that some Finnish insurance company has "bought" with exploded air bags. Then put the roll cage in and fit the mechanical parts. I'm not even trying to speculate if the mechanics fit to some car or would the suspension work at all, but I can't help but speculate with some of the cars out there. Or what how big would the resale market for these cars be. For example your own WRC/S2000 replicas: Fabia, Fiesta, DS3, Countryman or Polo
Why stop there if you can use your imagination? Here are some of my personal favorites for thinking outside the box: Alfa Romeo Giulietta, BMW 135 Coupe, Hyundai Veloster, Toyota GT86 and Audi A1.

One can always speculate with wild ideas. Most likely these kind of rule changes are never going to happen in Finland, but it's always fun to think "what if".

Testing for 2013 season

It's December already and about time to start winter testing for 2013 season. So what has changed for 2013? Basically everything except the series. I'll continue in Finnish rally championship and my season starts from Arctic Lapland Rally in the end of January. Andreas will try to drive abroad next year and it would have been a bit of a challenge for me to take few months leave from work combined with a house loan and the rest of the black holes making all the money disappear.

So next season I'll switch co-driving for Jari Kihlman -> Arctic Cross Racing
At the same time the fwd Fiesta R2 changes to a group N 4wd Mitsubishi Evo 9. A totally new challenge for me since I have never even sat in a 4wd rally car. In the beginning of December we had a chance to test the evo on snow. Testing was really needed since the car is brand new and has never been driven except in a test bench. I have seen a few rally cars and have to give credit to the car. The attention to detail is magnificent when the car has been built.

Jari comes from Kuusamo which is quite far north and also has good test roads. I hopped into my car and drove up there one weekend. 950km one way from Helsinki is quite a trip, but since there's only a limited amount of time when we have a possibility to test together it's good to use the time we have. I guess most rally people are used to driving long distances, so you just put the cruise control on and try not to get too bored.

In Kuusamo we planned to drive as much as we could. It was to be expected that with a new car we would have little problems to solve. Also I would have get used to a faster accelerating car and Jari would have to get used to my voice and maybe ask some adjustments to my reading rhythm.

Everything went really smooth during the day. We encountered virtually no problems and managed to drive more than we expected. I had always thought the group N cars to be somewhat heavy and clumsy. I had to adjust my perceptions a little bit. The evo was surprisingly light footed and seemed to turn nicely. From co-driver's seat it looked like Jari didn't have to "wrestle" the car at all. What didn't come as a surprise was the power. Compared to the R2 fiesta the evo has roughly double the power and only few hundred kilograms more weight. So on a fast road the scenery certainly moves faster. So we had a test day that went really well. Now still some more testing and waiting for the start of the new season. After the first test I'm certainly looking forward to Arctic Lapland Rally in Rovaniemi.

Team sport

Of course rallying is a team sport and you rely a lot on the people around you. The driver trusts the co-driver and the other way around. Both rely on their mechanics. During rallies all spend their time next to each other in hotels rooms, recce car, rally car and service car. You have to get along and more or less work under pressure. For anyone who knows the sport this goes without saying. A team sport.

There's also another aspect to rallying being a team sport. For most part the rallying community is a social punch of people and that's why I like it. Since the cars are start to stages on championship order you are always next to your main competitors. That doesn't really make a difference. Most of the crews are still finding it easy to chit chat when waiting in line to get to the stages. When somebody has had difficulties with the car setup there are easily 3-5 people speculating the setup and what could help. Same goes for lending stuff like tape, batteries, pliers etc when you are on the stages. On the service park the stuff that you lend/sell are just bigger -> windscreens, drive shafts, bumpers etc. The kind of an unwritten rule is that if you can't beat the opposition with driving skills then they simply are faster than you. Can't call this a team effort, but maybe more of a close community effort.

Co-driver's equipment

Someone asked once that why my equipment bag is so big? Simply because as a co-driver you have to carry a lot of stuff with you to the rallies.

First of all you have the normal stuff that the driver's also have: suit, underwear, socks, shoes, balaclava, HANS device, helmet, camel bag. The HANS device and helmet aren't something you easily carry in a bag since they require a lot of space. Especially the helmet. These take a lot of space in the bag since the rest of co-driver's equipment fit into a compact space. Driver's also have gloves, but obviously those don't mean much space wise. Instead of gloves I have two watches. One as a primary watch and the other as a back up.

Then the stuff in the co-driver's bag: Pace note book or two depending on a rally, different kinds of pencils/pens, extra led for pencils, eraser, a notepad for keeping team plans and other papers, organizer's road book, a small flashlight, electrical tape(always handy to have around), spare battery for watches, spare battery for intercom, couple of spare fuses, couple of protein bars, couple of recovery drinks, mobile phone, small piece of cloth for wheel nuts so that they don't melt inside the snow when changing tires from front to back, small screwdriver, small pliers.

In winter rallies I also have a couple of chemical "glove warmers" which warm up when you open the package. Nice to have if you retire and have to wait a couple of hours standing on a snow bank. Of course you have your normal winter clothing in the car with you, but since the warmers only weight some tens of grams they are nice to have around.  For testing I have a map book with all the roads in Finland. That isn't with me inside the rally car simply because it takes a lot of space and weighs maybe half a kilo.

So that's pretty much it. A lot more than just a pace note book and a road book that many picture the co-driver to have in a rally car. Of course it would be lighter to drive around without many of the items, but if they weight roughly a kilo then it doesn't make that much of a difference in my eyes. The annoyance of not having them around when you need them is bigger than the extra weight carried inside the car.