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