Rally Estonia 2015

[rage82]

In the weekend I was painting my living room and I was listening the rally radio for both days, what an amazing rally and battle for 1-st and 3-rd it was. Really happy for Alexey that finally he won an ERC event with the old evo, fingers crossed for Finland with the Fiesta despite it will be very a challenging switch. Hope he will have some proper testing prior to rally and not adjusting everything during shakedown. Kajto was also very impressive and the battle with Breen for the championship is wide open.

[martini2771]

Quick video review from motorsandsports.com from Rally Estonia 2015:

http://motorsunsports.lv/video/erc-rally-estonia-2015

[dimviii]

Lukys moment at last stage with 2 wheels from heli
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGv_fJ03r7I

[dimviii]

http://www.ewrc.cz/ewrc/fotogalery.p...2&fotograf=367

[dimviii]

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Anyone found video of Breen's 'heavy landing' or a photo of the car afterwards showing the damage ?

Maybe this at 20sec ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE69jHeDEE

[Jarek Z]

If at least one of them will be in top 5 at the end, i´ll be surprised

So Kajto was second, just 12 seconds behind the winner. Are you surprised?

[Kalm]

Anyone found video of Breen's 'heavy landing' or a photo of the car afterwards showing the damage ?

Maybe this at 20sec ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE69jHeDEE

nope, that cant be it, thats Timmu Kõrges jump in that video...
hopefully ERC is going to upload some more videos including onboards soon ... :P

[bluuford]

come on bluuford, tell us more about the rally!!!

Ok, OK, I will tell.. I was just very tired :-)

Warning, long post! accuse dimvii :-P

So, we started on Friday morning from Tallinn at 07:30. The first setback was the fact that I could not find my hiking boots, so I had to bring my Nokian rubber boots :-) They were very warm!
So, we planned to go to the old house corner in shakedown and there was another bad news, northward parking lot was only for press... Fortunately I did my homework well last year and we drove to the other side of the stage and walked along small forest trail that we used last year. When we reached to the stage then I found out that I had made one very big mistake… I didn’t noticed that shakedown is in opposite direction and this old house corner is extremely boring in this direction. Luckily I remembered that there are several very nice corners a few hundred meters towards the start of the stage. It was easy to walk there as security guys were very friendly (they were very strict near the old house).

So, we ended in a very fast section exactly one corner before Pärn crashed and one corner after Kõrge went off ;-) We hear both actions and walked to see Pärns car. As I told before, we saw how Pärns Fiesta disappeared behind the corner and then we heard a big bang. My friend told me that lets go and see it.. I had my kid with me and I told to my friend to wait a moment until I ask if my kid stays on the chair or comes with us, we had a short chat and suddenly I heard that next car has started (we were 45 sec from the start and it was possible to hear). Then told to very inexperienced young marshal (he was there for the first time, first stage) to move a little bit towards the start of the stage, on the visible side of the crest and slow next car down (because I knew that crash was behind very fast and basically blind corner and we didn’t know if the car is still on the road or not, no one was between those corners). Marshal went on one side of the road and I was on the other side. As it was very fast place, then we left maybe 2,5 m between us. Salo came with fifth gear and used those 2,5 m while driving something like 150 km/h, that was a bit scary, he didn’t lift at all but it seems that it put him to think that something might be wrong, so on the crash corner, someone was in the middle of the road to slow him down and everything went well. It was strange that he didn’t get new opportunity to do the stage, his stage was clearly interrupted.
On our corner was one Eurosport cameraman who was standing on the place where all the cars were throwing huge amounts of stones. He was completely crazy and when we asked if it is painful, then he showed us some small injuries. He was the one whose camera was knocked down by Plangi ;-)
Then we moved to Tartu to our fraternity house and I must say that many cars were very slow, historics were great! We were in the middle of the straight where we were able to see two corners and many cars took the corner in the middle of the road, like some taxis. However, atmosphere was nice and some cars were pretty spectacular ;-)
Next morning we were a bit late with wakeup and I had to drive, because my driver qualified on the co-drivers seat only. We spectated stages nr 3 and 5. Very fast, downhill right corner. 2WD drivers were very spectacular there like Volver, Niinemäe, Sirmanc and all Opels ;-) Lukyanuk, Kangur, Plangi and Kajto were all very clean there. We shortly met forumer Garais (I think it is his forum name), he moved to service to meet Pluto ;-)
Then we moved to SS7 to my favourite place, we were a bit late and we missed a few cars. My favourite place was not restricted area this year and it was spectacular as always. Luckily no one crashed but the French crew Lubet/Belloto made a spectacular stunt there (they were over the limit almost everywhere we saw them). They cut too much into the corner and somehow they jumped form the bank to the corner and passed it successfully!
We moved to SS9 to end our day and now we were together with Garais again. It was the final corner of the gravel stages on Saturday and it was spectacular, it was very long corner that tightens at the end. Many drivers had proper moments there and we saw some extreme sideways driving. Lukyanuk, Plangi, Kõrge, Aus, Kaur and Kajto all very clean on that corner.

On the final day we had very long sleep again and my driver didn’t qualify for the drivers seat again, so, I had to drive again. I must say that he was very bad co-driver as well, because he was able to direct us to wrong place almost always, luckily I knew the roads and understood when we were on the right place ;-) We missed the first loop because I was a bit busy with forecast and we were late out from our accommodation! We parked our car near to the spot where Plangi hit the camera and walked a few hundred meters towards the start of that stage. It was quite long downhill corner. Lukyanuk, Kajto, Aus, Niinemäe, Volver and Sirmacis were really fast there, Plangi was too fast already one corner before his huge moment. And after the end of the stage we moved to Zwaldas crash place and helped them to put the car back on its wheels.

My overall impressions. Rally was very compact and selection of stages was great. I think it was the smallest distance I have ever driven during one rally! Most of the surface was still very good only few places were with great ruts.
Drivers:
You might say that Lukyanuk is crazy. No, he is not. Maybe sometimes. He has extremely feeling of the car and he is able to predict how the car should behave. He was very clean in all the places we saw.
Kajto, was very fast and clean, he was one of my biggest surprise of the rally. Very well deserved 2nd place
Aus: This guys is worth some credits. He has 9 years old car, couple of family friends as mechanics and father as a team manager. Great drive, great result.
Plangi was driving mostly very well but seems that some car problems during stages nr 2,3,4,5 and driving error in SS7 lost him the podium position. He was very lucky with incident in SS15. The funny story is that he broke one tyre on that spot but he discovered that only 0,5 bar is in his rear left as well. So, he took last stage very easy with warning lights on. He was only 0,5 sec behind Kõrge. Kõrge didn’t know it and pushed pretty hard and got puncture in SS16, so finally Plangi finished a bit ahead of him again;-)

Kõrge was driving well, mostly. Some mistakes robbed some time and confidence. Not too bad with new car and it seemed that 208 T16 as overall package is not working in fast Estonian roads. There is plenty of room for development

Breen: I do not know if it was the same problem with the car or him. He was nearly unvisible in my spots. Nothing great to say.
Salo: All over the place, strange lines, sometimes backing of before blind crests. Very bad drive:

Sunninen: Mostly nice lines, sometimes overdriving, Endned badly.
Kruuda: He has developed as a driver… a lot… I remember his lines from a few years ago and they were very angular, now it was clean, fast and nice to watch. This guy has a great potential
Kangur: Very good drive despite one mistake with wrong pacenote. Was a bit too fast during free practice (was on two wheels on our rapid corner together with Murakas) but calmed down by the rally.
Kaur: beautiful drive, just a small mistake ended his rally.

Pärn: Felt too fast during free practice and QS. I am not sure if it was technical problem or speed that took him off. It just felt too fast and I was not the onlyone.
JERC: Sirmacis : Flatout everywhere, clean drive, nothing bad to say, he was clearly faster than other drivers together with Niinemäe. It was pure unluck that Niinemäe lost his position to Bergkvist. He was clearly faster than Swede. However, Niinemäe lost nearly 15 seconds and second spot 1 km before the end of rally when the engine just shut off and he had to restart the car. Seems that 208 R2 is very fast car but still unreliable (Ingram also retired on the final morning with electrical problem, however, his speed was a bit dissapointing).
Volver: This guy is fearless. He is too fast. He needs to take some lessons from Urmo Aava to put his fearless approach in a good use.
All the Polish drivers were driving with very good lines and seems that Urmo has done some great job with his driving lessons;-)

Well, I am almost happy with the rally. I was just sleeping too long ;-) Driving was very spectacular and competition was very tough. Strange is the fact that there were only three drivers in the lower part of top 10 driving Michelin tyres.
And guys, if you see Eurport cameramen on the stage, then feel free to direct them to a little bit more spectacular spot. The cameraman in our spot moved to the spot that we suggested ;-) and his spot was shown live several times in TV show.

Too long.. One nice video for the end:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1X...ature=youtu.be
You can see here that during Free practice Pärn nearly hits the same tree that Lukyanuk hit during the QS (one corner after Pärn crash). By the way, Pärn in Estonian is basswood (Tilia)... so Basswood hit the oaktree ;-)

And funny photo of photographer who was trying to make some selfie with flying car.
https://instagram.com/p/5SqmDim-Al/

[eib1]

So Kajto was second, just 12 seconds behind the winner. Are you surprised?

Yes, i am. Very impressive drive by Kajto, biggest surprise of weekend.