Finnish rallying championship news

[Hartusvuori]

Last Saturday was national rally held near Jyväskylä called Jyväskylän Suurajot - 1000 Lakes Rally. That name might ring a bell... I think this was now 4th time for event to be held as such, in the midsummer with emphasis on the historic rally cars. This year around 165 cars started and some 40% of them in historic classes. Event had 5 stages near Petäjävesi and Uurainen, and like always with Central Finnish rallies, some of these stages has been used in the WRC event as well. Beautiful fast roads with a lot of going up and down, flowing bends as well as treacherous bends. We did SS1 in whole, some 40 cars in SS3 and most of the cars in SS5.

On SS1 we stayed at a tightening right after a faster section. Young birch trees on the left, about hundred rally fans on the right. That section continued with an S-bend, and a little later on another set of S-bends if you walked around. Very nice, that is. 6-7 cars had close calls there, going wide. First car to roll was a small Fiesta, unfortunate braking that let the rear end loose and the car spun and rolled. That was so early in the corner that I didn't even see it, only heard. A little later we saw a much heavier crash. BMW entered the corner too fast and too wide, soon after exiting the road rear left hit a stone and the car rolled around 3 times into the trees. Crew okey, car not so. 3-4 trees thick as a leg got chopped in a blink. Car was well into the trees, but it took less than 10 minute from spectators to got it back on the road and pulled away. Funny thing - or "funny" - it was my friend's friend that drove that BMW, first proper event, first stage... It's tough how it takes a long time to build a car and then three minutes into the stage, crash, and months work again. This picture tells a lot. You can see the crash here - the whole video is very nicely done by the way.

For SS5 (parts of SS Kuohu from old 1000 Lakes) we opted for the first corner of the stage, a tightening left. Only a few slides there, it was quite close to the start of the stage, so not so high speed. But it was nice place to spend the rest of the day anyway.

Here's a crash compilation video from SS2 which had a treacherous left-hander that was the most action-filled place on the rally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhZ2Jxt2EYY

Here's my friend's photos from the event: 1000 Lakes 2013

And now I've reached the moment where next rally for me is Rally Finland. There are one national event next weekend and FRC event the weekend after that, but those I will miss other activities.

[Hartusvuori]

Nikara with Mini WRC for the next FRC event in Kouvola too.

Also Fredrik Åhlin makes a return :-)

[COD]

The rally is tomorrow! Results same pages as before!

[Juha_Koo]

So, in Kouvola a very tight fight between Salo and Vihavainen. Both were pushing very hard and the whole time it was matter of seconds. But in the end Vihavainen made a mistake on SS7 and lost 19 secs so the battle was over and Salo won. The route was not similar to previous Kouvola FRCs, as it was faster this year.

Take a look of this onboard from SS4 Salo/Salminen, average speed of 135kph... Sensation of speed on the field sections is not so evident, but wait for the final section of the stage when they "dive" into the forest around 04:45, crazy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXpLAQBC2zM

Also, SS6 Salo/Salminen: SM O.K autoralli, ss6, Juha Salo, Lancer Evo X R4 - YouTube

This video contains footage from two different difficult right handers, take a look of the corner speeds on the second one, pretty crazy! (Lindroos for example) (also few mistakes and one big crash): O.K. Auto Ralli, Kouvola 13.7.2013 - YouTube

[Juha_Koo]

Oh, and I forgot. Two stars of the rally for me were Matias Kauppinen and Vasily Gryazin.

Gryazin showed very good stage times (2x4th, 3x3rd, 1x2nd & 1st), overall he was fourth, +47,3 secs from Salo. In my opinion this is a very good result, especially when he sure lost some time on the superfast sections with S2000.

In SM3 it was a very tight rally. Matias Kauppinen showed some great speed, in the end he was second in the class, +6,3 secs from Lindroos which IMHO is very good. He won Lindroos on five stages. A small shame that Kauppinen will drive NORF with GrN. Subaru and not Citroen, I'm sure he would be really fast on NORF stages among 2WD competitors. For Jaro Kinnunen it was a short rally - 1km from SS1 start a problem with water system resulted in overheat and they had to retire.

[Susiraja]

Vasily Gryazin certainly made an impression among the 4wd cars. Really well driven for a guy of his age.

SM3 class is always the class to watch for. That's where the real battles are nowadays and impossible to say before the rally in which order are the top 5 drivers. Matias Kauppinen drove a brilliant rally. Lindroos has had to push to the limit this year. No matter what he says in the interviews

I would like to include one more name to the "stars of the rally". Jari Huttunen drove really close to the SM3 class top drivers' stage times on the two first two stages. Exception being that Huttunen drives an old GSI Kadett and WITHOUT pace notes Would have been interesting to see his pace for the rest of the rally, but he had crashed on stage number three. Was he then pushing too much? Maybe. Maybe not. Don't know what caused the crash. When finding the limits you sometimes crash.

[sindroms]

Vasily Gryazin certainly made an impression among the 4wd cars. Really well driven for a guy of his age.

Do you believe that four years ago was the first time ever when that guy sat behind the wheel of stock car? Seriously. As I said somewhere in previous posts it's definitely worth to pay attention to him. Next outings - "Rally Estonia" and NORF.

[Co-FIN]

..

[Hartusvuori]

FIA Historic ERC event Lahti Historic Rally will start today.

Results should appear here: Online1 valikko
Itinerary, pages 6-7: http://www.lahtihistoricrally.com/ti...ersio%20fi.pdf
Entry list: http://www.lahtihistoricrally.com/ti...jat%202013.pdf

[makinen_fan]

There will be live onboard from JML's car here Red Bull Live

(From his fb account)

Testing testing!!! Today we are trying something different. Not sure how well it will work, but from 14.00 CET today we will be trying to send a live stream from onboard Jari-Matti's Audi Quattro as he goes through the stages today. Tune in to see what happens - don't know if it will work properly!! Hopefully you'll be sitting in the co-driver's seat for some epic driving this afternoon - let's see - no promises - this is just us testing!!!

Feedback would be appreciated to [email:ikwdt3bp]media@jmlatvala.com[/email:ikwdt3bp]