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.

FRC Seinäjoki 2015

If the conditions weren't good for a winter rally last year in Joensuu then this year in Seinäjoki they really in favour. First two stages on Friday evening were driven on pure gravel. We even used summer tyres for a 60km road section for Saturday's stages. Those were in better condition for a winter rally. Still the last stage had to be cancelled because the stage was in such a bad condition. We started the rally with too calm of a pace. Managed to finish second in class. We are now in second position in the Suomi Cup points. Points wise our retirement in the Arctic was bad, but the points leader Aaltonen retired at Seinäjoki so that helped us to close the gap a little bit. With this pace it will take until the last rally of the season to see who wins Suomi Cup. Now looking forward to the first summer rally in Joensuu on the 13th of June. We should have a brand new rally car there the BMW 125i.

Snow rally?

Road section on summer tyres. At least the rims look really nice.

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.

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

Finnish championship rallies in Turku and Tampere

Rallying can be cruel sometimes. Turku and Tampere showed how you can turn something bad to worse. I a way Turku wasn't bad. We were driving with a steady pace and coming to the last stage we were third in class. A minor concern was that one of the oil pressure values was sometimes going up and down, but the one was OK. The diagnose was a faulty sensor. Then three kilometres to the stage the engine blew up. A three centimetre hole on the side of the engine. And the car caught on fire. Luckily only a small fire and the fire extinguisher killed it easily. As you can imagine the mood among the crew was pretty low.

A month later the last championship round in Tampere. All the stages 150km of them were old NORF stages so we were really looking forward to the event. On Friday in the dark there was only one stage. Pengonpohja which is my favourite along Ouninpohja and one Itärally stage. With one spin we were still third on the stage. However when driving towards the night service Jari wasn't feeling well. I thought it might be the blood sugar levels even though we had been eating throughout the day. After parc ferme Jari started to vomit and a violent stomach flue lasted the whole night. No chance to start to day 2. That was the end of our season...