Where are the Danes?

[Maui J.]

I have been following rally for over 25 years and the consistant supply of top Finnish drivers always amazes me. There seems to be a bottomless bucket of them. Back then there was Mikkola, Alen, Vatanen, Salonen, and not forgetting Pentti of course.
Then there were the Swedes of the same era... Waldegaard, Blomqvist.

So for the next 20 years, one thing that always puzzled me was where were the Norwegians? Their country was right next door to these two powerhouses of world rallying, but until Petter turned up, there was basically nothing. Now Norway has it's own WRC rally, an ex-World Champ, Henning doing his thing, plus a couple of young guns in Mikkelsen and Ostberg making an impression. Norway has defiantly arrived on the world stage.

So I ask the question. Where are the Danes? Denmark is part of Scandivania, isn't it? Is rallying not popular with the Danish? There doesn't seem to be many here on the forum either.

I do remember seeing Henrik Lundgaard in the Corolla at Rally Australia in 2001. I think he picked up the 'Teams' Cup that year. But apart from him I can't remember hearing or reading about another in all these years of following the WRC.

Hello Denmark, haven't you ever looked over the fence and seen how good rallying is?

[pino]

Mate, cars are very very expencive in here, only a few people can afford rallying our danish member MikeD will confirm this

[SubaruNorway]

Wasen't there some fee that you didn't have to pay anymore think it was that you had to register the cars as road cars earlier.

[Mihai]

The Danish rally championship was won by a Renault Megane a couple of years ago. You can't expect a driver to compete successfuly in the WRC if he comes from a quite low-level rally championship at home. No offence for the Danes! I always respected Denmark for being such a small nation and still having so many drivers competing in international endurance and/or single-seater racing in the last decade: Kristensen, Magnussen, Watt, Kiesa, Kolby, Bremer and so on. But no successful rally driver since Lundgaard.

[MikeD]

Hello to all (from Denmark

First of all I am impressed what some of you know about Denmark - but the main reason for little rally action in Denmark is - like SUBARUNORWAY1 wrote - a huge tax of Rally cars. This tax has just been removed, with effect from the 1. January 2007. Hopefully this will give some more interes in Rally here in DK (eventhough that nationality means absolutely nothing to me).

Besides Lundgaard, we do have a rally driver in Kristian Poulsen who did compete in a Corolla WRC in Rally Germany 2006.

When it comes to motorsport it's all about F1 and Le Mans in Denmark (Due to Tom Kristensen). F1 is hugely popular despite us having only a few (and very slow) F1 drivers. It seems that Denmark is devided in two camps. Those who supporte the finns (Hakkinen, Raikkonen and Kovailainen) and those who support Schumacher/Ferrari.

I know no Rally fans (beside myself) whereas we are 4 F1 fans at my job (out of 15 employees).

[N]

If I'm not mistaken RallyCross was more popular than Rallying in Norway, so that's the reason for such a small number of rally drivers from Norway.

[Viking]

Rally was more or less forbidden in Norway from the early 70`s to the late 80`s (very strong safety rules making it impossible too organize).

[pino]

I know no Rally fans (beside myself) whereas we are 4 F1 fans at my job (out of 15 employees).

You know me now, I live in Denmark

[Jarek Z]

Another Danish driver besides the great Lundgaard is Kristian Poulsen, who was competing in the German championship two years ago. I don't know why he was competing in Germany instead of Danish championship, but he has never been as good as Lundgaard. Here is a photo of Poulsen's Toyota that I took on Lausitz Rallye in 2004:
http://www.rallyonline.pl/ft.php?idg=734&pg_[go]=16

[MikeD]

You know me now, I live in Denmark

Great

What is an Italian doing in small Denmark? (The italien food is better, the italien weather is better, the italien women are more beautiful and the italien cars are a lot cool'er than the average VW her in DK)...