This was the first gravel event for the season and for me in my new VW. We tested the car in Mexico in November 2012 before the car was classified. The rules of today say that testing of classified WRC cars can only take place in Europe. I took some time off and prepared myself for the race in California getting used to the heat and the time difference. In qualification I was seventh because I had harder tyres than the others. Softer tyres give better performance but they don’t last as well in hot conditions. Our aim was to save the tyres whose total amount was only 28 for the whole rally, qualification included. The longest stage was about 55 km which demanded a lot of the tyres in plus 30 degrees. On Thursday there were only two special stages which started the rally. On the latter my engine stopped in the start and I lost about five seconds. This put me on the ninth position after Thursday. On Friday I was able to drive the stage number 3 only for about 300 meters when I hit a stone that some car before me had raised onto the road. I could not go around it because I could not see it until it was too late. It broke the front suspension arm and that was it, no more driving for us. There were no words to describe our feelings. Rally2 rule made it possible for us to continue the race on Saturday which I took as testing of the car. I was able to find more confidence with the car and I was also able to get a good rhythm on Saturday and Sunday which gave me one extra point on power stage although I was the first car on the road there. In Mexico the farther back you drove the cleaner the road was, incredibly much cleaner which added the grip a lot. My team mate Sebastien Ogier won, Mikko Hirvonen was second and Thierry Neuville third (his first podium).

A week before the race it didn’t look good in Sweden snow wise. Luckily a few days before the rally it snowed about 30 cm and it was a decent winter rally after all. The roads were frozen so the conditions were almost perfect. My race started badly when on Thursday in the qualification I stopped the engine on the start line and ended up sixth. There were 17 WRC cars on the race and we could pick the place where to drive. I took the position number 12.The actual race started well because I was second while Sebastien Ogier was leading. My stage times varied a lot though. I was battling for the second place with Sebastien Loeb and by the end of the day I lost the battle because on stage 7 in Vargåsen we had trouble with our intercom and I could not hear the notes. I had to drive about 10 km without notes. On Saturday both Ogier and Loeb went their way and I was left on the third position although I drove my first Volkswagen fastest stage in Fredriksberg. I changed the set up in suspension but that didn’t make the car any faster even though the car felt different. At the end of the day Mads Östberg passed me and I was left on the fourth position 6.1 seconds behind him. On Sunday I made the car softer and tried to compete with Östberg but we both were as fast. I tried to push but realized that I did not know the car well enough, yet. Östberg was third but his performance was better than mine because he had a 20-minute time penalty due to the overheating of his engine on Friday. I was fourth in the rally and got some consolation on power stage where I got two extra points. The power stage was an eye-opener for me: during the whole race I tried to change the suspension but my problem was the braking. There was something in the front lock. Realizing that took the pressure off my shoulders right away because now I knew how to change the car in the future rallies. My team mate Sebastien Ogier won which was the first victory for the new team Volkswagen. Sebastien Loeb was second although he tried to challenge Ogier the best he could on the last day of rally Sweden.

The season 2013 started in Monte Carlo in a new team and with a new car Polo R WRC. I was able to test the car about 1800 km on snow , gravel and tarmac at the end of 2012 which is why I knew how the car would do on dry and wet tarmac but on snowy and icy tarmac I could not give a 100% performance. In the recce it seemed that the race would be fairly dry but a day before the rally it started to snow heavily. The rally would be a snowy one. My aim was to drive to the finish without risks and be within the fifth fastest drivers if possible. That would have been a good result. I started the race cautiously especially because the conditions were so awful. The first day when the tarmac was wet or dry went okay but on snowy and icy sections I had problems because the car was under steering. I tried to change the set up between stages one and two but did not have enough time and so we were late from the stage start which brought us 30 second’s time penalty. On the last stage of the day I had a puncture but still we were fifth in the rally. On the second day I kept on changing the set up which took the stage times up and down and I fell into the sixth position. On day three I managed to get the set up right and the Polo started to feel my own. Stage 13 Sisteron went perfectly and I regained the fifth position. Day four, the last day of the rally, was terrible, the worst I had ever experienced: slushy snow on the ice plus rain to make it even more slippery. I had no idea of how slippery a surface like that could be which caused problems at the start of the fourteenth stage. The car lost its grip on the slush and went into a wall about 80km/h. The hit was pretty hard. Jevgeni Novikov, too, went off at the same spot. I should have driven more slowly and that’s that, no need to explain more! The disappointment was tremendous but Sebastien Ogier came second which gave comfort to the team. Sebastien Loeb won and Dani Sordo was third.

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