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