This rally is a tradition of mine if I have time. If this rally is on its usual place – a week after Nesteoil rally – I have time. I could not test our Escort BDA after Rally Estonia but I assumed everything would be in order. The first stage in Lahti was driven between Vääksy and Lammi and the road surface was hard. It was a cold morning so the road was slippery but in the middle of the stage the grip started to be found. I drove like in the WRC series so we were the fastest. On the next stages I increased my pace which was very hard for the engine and the transmission. Stage five (Hyväneula) was in Nesteoil rally 2011, a familiar stage for me which is why I drove the fastest ever on BDA. My co-driver Asko Sairanen tried to make me drive slower but I did not listen to him. Asko was persistent so I promised to ease up a bit on the next stages. Asko said to me that if I drove faster we would hit the trees. I drove 120km/h throughout the stage that was 26 km long. After Hyväneula the engine started to malfunction and there were two gears missing. Frank Cunningham’s service lent us a gearbox, again. We could not do anything to the malfunction but to hope that the engine would last the second day, Saturday. On stage seven on Saturday we were able to reach gear number five with 9500 rpm when the engine lost one of its cylinders. I tried to drive a bit more but after one kilometer the engine died totally and started to burn. I had to struggle with the fire extinguisher which took me so long that the damage was quite bad. I had to retire and there was lots of work to be done with the engine.