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.

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".