Co-driver: Miikka Anttila
The World Championship rally in Greece is always very challenging and so it was even this year although the roads were better than last year. The rally started pretty well and after two stages we were number five in overall. Unfortunately on stage three I had a heavy spin and lost over 20 seconds. After that there were one problem after another but miraculously we stayed on the road. On Friday evening we got back the trust and our position now was eighth.
Saturday turned out to be extremely difficult. The first stage in the morning was “only” 48 kilometers and in the middle of the stage we had the first flat tire. My co-driver Miikka and I were able to change the tire in three minutes and we still had our chance to get some world championship points but driving the same “short” stage again took away that chance. Six kilometers before the finish we lost both our front tires and because we only had one spare tire we had to put two unbroken tires to the front and one broken tire to the rear and drive very slowly and carefully to the finish losing over ten minutes. On Sunday we only tried to drive good times and get ourselves into a better mood again after the dark Saturday which we were able to do, we even managed to drive one fastest time. Our position got a bit better; too, we were number twelve at the end of the rally. The punctures destroyed our race but at least we learned how to save tires.
12th
Car: Ford Focus WRC -06
Service Team: Stobart