Co-driver: Miikka Anttila

Rally Norway was new to everyone and the stages seemed to be challenging. I was the third fastest on stage 1 and after two stages when we came to the service I was in fourth position. We had some minor problems with the power steering on stage 1 which was why we decided to change it. It took longer than we thought and our service time limit was exceeded by six minutes. We had to adjust the power steering again on the road section before the next stage which we missed by three minutes. All that cost us a time penalty of one minute and 30 seconds. The driving on Friday went really well, though. On stage 5 I was even able to drive my first fastest time with a WRC car! At the end of Friday we were in tenth position. On Saturday it was snowing heavily the whole day which made the roads very snowy. There was also some fog so that the visibility was bad, too. Due to the bad weather the drivers made mistakes because it was more difficult to drive there than it was in this year’s Monte Carlo Rally. We weren’t able to drive especially good times on the next stages but we drove without any bigger mistakes and finally we found ourselves in fifth position. My only goal for Sunday was to come to the finish because there was no one I could really compete with anymore. Number four was one minute ahead of me and number six was one minute behind me. My times on Sunday were pretty good and the only minor mistake I made was on the last stage where one crossing went too long. Being fifth in the race gave us four world championship points which made me really satisfied. Without the problems we had on Friday I would have been competing for the third position, but it’s no use worrying about that because there will be other rallies and other opportunities to improve the results.

5th

Car: Ford Focus WRC -06
Service Team: Stobart

Co-driver: Miikka Anttila

Before the rally I was able to test drive the car for about 50 kilometres and now it was adjusted for racing. Right at the beginning, on the first stage already, my pace was correct, but I made a few minor mistakes which slowed me down so that I couldn’t do the times that would have been within the five fastest ones. On stage 6 I was the fourth and it started to seem that I had won the obstacles. But then again on the next stage I span in a very slow right and the car stayed on in the middle of the road between the sides of the road. It took me about 40 minutes to turn the car on that narrow road and I went down in the results, I was number ten now. My goal for Saturday was to try and drive without mistakes and to drive some good times. Finally in the afternoon I managed to get better times and my self-confidence got better. Now I was number nine with nine seconds gap to Gardemeister and ten seconds gap to Stohl. On Sunday there would still be some competition with those two. Unfortunately my Sunday didn’t start well. On the first stage of the morning after I had driven about ten kilometres the oil pressure started to drop and we had to stop the car after calling the service. I went out, lifted the hood and saw oil all over. The breathing pipe of the engine had frozen up because of the very cold weather. It formed pressure in the engine and made the oil leak out. The retirement was inevitable, but luckily we had stopped the car on time and didn’t break down the engine.

retirement

Car: Ford Focus WRC -06
Service Team: Stobart