Finnish rallying championship news

[Susiraja]

Elfyn Evans and Nil Solans have entered to Kouvola with Fiestas. Going to be interesting to see their speed before NORF.

[Juha_Koo]

Great test onboard from Lappi on a small road...

Esapekka Incar - Printsport Pictures

[pantealex]

Mattias Therman entered next FRC event in Kouvola in Printsport-run Fiesta S2000.

It´s "new" car, so they have now 3 of them in Printsport garage.

[tolis]

So, we expect him in NORF in a S2000 car this year?

[Hartusvuori]

The rally of the day had a nice ring to its name: 1000 Lakes Rally. It was of course a national event, some 50/50 historic and gr.F cars. It was also of course Jyväskylä-based and stages had roads familiar from the history of The 1000 Lakes.

Fastest - and pretty much most spectacular - was Veli-Matti Saarelainen in his Ascona. We remember Saarelainen for his victory in last years Lahti Historic ERC. F-Cup favourite Toni Kuhanen finished second.

We saw the first and last stage. Two offs and two spins on the first stage - and so much dust that I don't remember when I was that dirty the last time. Great day altogether.

[Allar]

where i can see Kouvola entrys?

[Racing Ka]

SM O.K.Auto-ralli******************* Kilpailuun hyvksytyt

[tolis]

Kaisanlahti had a really nasty off, went off and hit a tree stump, 100+ kph to 0 in less than a second, engine came into cabin etc.

Kaisanlahti's off: SM O.K. Auto-ralli, Kouvola 14.7.2012 - YouTube

[Xsara Fan]

Another video, another crashes... O.K. AUTO SM RALLI Kouvola 2012 - YouTube

[Juha_Koo]

FRC Kouvola was very eventful, lots of bad crashes and jumps. Not so nice to hear many times during the day that ambulance is on stage...

On SS3 there was a bad jump, first Korhonens went off (onboard: Kouvola Sm-ralli 2012 Jukka Korhonen big jump crash - YouTube ). There was somesort of a mixup with the warning, apparently such a bad one that no one warned Annala and therefore he came maximum to the jump, rolling over badly. Luckily the car took a bit different route as Korhonens and some spectators were still in the forest. Exterior video of the events: O.K. AUTO SM RALLI Kouvola 2012 - YouTube There was also ambulance needed when Juolahti had a bad jump and both crewmembers hurt their backs. I'm not 100% sure where this jump happened. Tolis posted the video of Kaisanlahti's very bad off. It was a "place" and for some reason he didn't lift at all. Everyone thought that the car will roll far, but a new big stump stopped the car badly. Luckily there shouldn't be any really serious injuries, but the car is destroyed, rollcage damaged, engine in the cabin.

SM1 top guys had a real fight, Lappi had engine problems for a while so Salo was able to challenge him. In the end, Lappi was able to get back the lost time and won. Salo second and Jussi Tiippana third. Tiippana told that this was his best ever FRC rally, for once without problems. Check out this crazy onboard of Salo/Salminen, maximum attack all the time on SS3 with a big moment in the end: Kouvola O.K AUTO SM-Ralli 2012, ss3, Juha Salo Evo X R4 - YouTube (Two more, SS2 & SS8, can be found from the same channel.)

In 2WD, SM2 it was pretty much average rally, Lindroos won as usual, Kinnunen second (he posted some really good stagetimes during the rally) and Hautamäki third. In SM3 Amberg had managed to overcome problems with the car seen in Lapua and now had a really good rally. He won, Evans was second (very promising performance by him, driving looked very good) and Kiviniemi third. Shame that Korhonen crashed.

I have a small video coming later today.