All-but one of the Pirelli Star Drivers were competing in Finland for the first time - but every one of them departed with the utmost respect for the event and a burning desire to be back on the switchback, super-fast Finnish tracks again.
Jon Williams was the only driver to get his Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X through to the finish, with the other drivers getting caught out by their inexperience of driving on these unique Scandinavian roads.
Pirelli Star Driver report
South African driver Jon Williams maintained his finishing record among the Pirelli Star Drivers. Once again, Williams and his British co-driver George Gwynn were the only crew to complete the entire route. Starting the rally with limited World Rally Championship experience Williams was seeded further down the field for the opening day of the event and then suffered when the competitor ahead of him had a mechanical problem. Williams was forced to follow him for 10km on one stage. Saturday was a much better day for Williams who rocketed up the Group N leaderboard with considerably quicker times than he has managed on previous rounds. Despite the added pressure of being the only driver left in the event, Williams continued to level his learning curve and make good times in Group N all the way to the end of the event. Despite an intercom problem on the final morning, he finished 21st overall and 5th in Group N on what remains one of the hardest rounds of the FIA World Rally Championship to come to without any previous experience.
The fastest Pirelli Star Driver on the event was local hero Jarkko Nikara. Nikara's aspirations of winning Group N on his home round of the World Rally Championship were spoiled by a gearbox problem on the way back to service after the super special stage at Killeri on the outskirts of Jyväskylä town on Thursday evening. The Ralliart Italy team changed the gearbox in record time at service on Friday morning, but the Finn was still left with 1m30s of penalties when he left the service park bound for the first stage proper. Despite that handicap - and a fire later in the day which caused him to collect more penalties - Nikara was regularly the fastest of the conventional Group N cars. He retired from the event after SS15 when he broke the sump of his car on a heavy landing.
Mark Tapper and Martin Semerád were level-pegging through the early part of the day. So close was their battle that the pair actually shared the same time to the tenth of a second on the third stage. Unfortunately, Friday wasn't to favour either of them. Tapper damaged his suspension on SS6 and retired due to that problem on the next stage, while the gearbox on Semerád's Lancer broke on stage eight. Both drivers returned on Saturday, both retired again when they suffered damage to the underside of their Mitsubishis.
Cypriot Nicos Thomas had a new co-driver for the event, taking his countryman Angelos Loizides for the first time this season. Thomas admitted it took him a while to acclimatise to the completely alien Finnish surroundings. Once in the groove, however, his times began to come down, until he slid off the road in 'Urria' and broke the car's oil cooler.
The drivers
Car 61: Nicos Thomas/Angelos Loizides
Nicos Thomas said: "I can't tell you how incredible it was to be driving on these roads - or how different they are from the roads I am used to driving on in Cyprus. I can honestly say that I had never spent so long in top gear or in the air on a stage! The pace notes and everything were working well and my new co-driver settled in quickly and was doing a good job. It was very frustrating when we went off in the first stage of the last loop on Saturday. The road was very slippery, with lots of loose gravel - quite different to how it had been in the damp conditions in the morning. I ran wide in a corner and dropped off the road, it was bad luck that this broke the oil cooler. I am so disappointed; I thought I was finally going to make it to the final day of a round of the Pirelli Star Driver programme. Now I have to focus on the next event in Spain."
Car 62: Jon Williams/George Gwynn
Jon Williams said: "What a rally! I can tell you, I'm thinking of selling my house to make sure that I get back to this event next year. It's just been fantastic. Okay, the first day was tough when we kept catching the car ahead. We had a smashed windscreen and damage to the front of the car from following him and trying to get past him. I got pretty wound up at the time, but I calmed down and got into the second day and then just had a ball. I was two minutes behind Nicos when I started the day, but I just focused on trying to catch him. All day, I set target after target to take time out of him and get past him. It was amazing, we were taking 15 seconds a stage back. I think I was helped a little bit by the fact that I'd driven a lot in ruts in Africa, so I had a good idea how to keep the speed up on the second run at the stages.
I feel like everything is coming together a bit more now. I feel more at home in the car - and don't forget this is only my fourth ever event in this kind of Group N machine - and I feel I learned more than ever on this rally. Before the start, it was my dream to make the top 10 [in Group N] but then suddenly we were moving into the top five. Amazing. I've had to be patient with my development and build things up slowly this season, but this is some of the reward. I'm here with another finish under my belt, which is great for me and the team, and my speed is getting better and better. There is no doubt that I've never driven faster or flown further on a rally. I watched some of the in-car footage last night and it's just insane!"
Car 63: Jarkko Nikara/Jarkko Kalliolepo
Jarkko Nikara said: "I was really looking forward to this event so much and the way it started was quite a shame. But, I did all I could, which was to try and set some good times. Everything was going well until we saw some smoke coming from under the bonnet in the fourth stage. We got to the end of the stage and found one of the hoses taking oil to the differential had come loose and sent oil to the engine. We put out a fire, but this made us late arriving to the next stage, so we got more penalties and had to drive Palsankylä stage without the differential working correctly. After that I started driving again and was pushing the car as hard as I could without breaking anything. Everything was going okay until we made one landing on Saturday which broke the sump guard. In the car, I didn't know the protection was gone from under the car, so I keep pushing then we made another big jump and heavy landing and the car is broken. That is the end. It's a little bit sad, because we could have made the good result here. Okay, it was tough to fight with the Super 2000 cars, but it would have been nice to have a go."
Car 64: Martin Semerád/Bohuslav Ceplecha
Martin Semerád said: "This was the rally I was so looking forward to. I think all of us were. It's the one we all knew a lot about, we'd all watched on television - so getting here and doing the recce was incredible. The first day was going okay and I was having so much fun driving the car - and the times were okay too. But then, shifting down from fourth to third gear, near the end of SS8, the gearbox exploded. There was a big bang and no gears. It was totally destroyed; there were bits of metal everywhere. We got the gearbox changed okay, but we obviously had the SupeRally penalties which spoiled the chance of us making the result on this rally. On Saturday I didn't realise I had lost the sump guard in one stage - I had also lost a brake pipe as well. I tried to fix the brakes before the next stage. Doing that meant we got some penalties for being late arriving in the stage, but the worse was to follow when I retired after damaging the sump. It's a real shame that we didn't get a clean run after we had looked forward to the rally - and managed to set some good times when everything was okay."
Car 65: Mark Tapper/Jeff Judd
Mark Tapper said: "This has been an amazing event. You can see why everybody raves about this event, it was rallying heaven out on the stages. Obviously my injured arm wasn't the ideal way to start the event, but it was okay. I was feeling it a little bit when I was trying to pull the handbrake on in the stages and then the movement of shifting from fourth to fifth gear was a bit tricky, but once the adrenaline started kicking in on the stages, I was able to put it out of my mind a bit. It helped that we were driving down these awesome roads. Unfortunately I got caught out on one of the big jumps on the second run through 'Himos'. The car landed heavily and crushed the oil filter. I carried on for a while, but the car was going no further. It was so disappointing not get to the finish, but this rally is so much about experience and we've certainly learned a great deal about driving these kinds of stages."
The other quotes
Phil Short, Pirelli Star Driver Supervisor said:
"Rally Finland was something of a mixed bag for the drivers. Given that only one of the drivers [Nikara] had ever competed on this event previously, some inexperience of the conditions was a little bit inevitable. On the positive side from the car, we have seen the engine showing good durability and performance, which is a step forward from previous events.
"Again, the stand-out pace from the drivers has come from Jarkko Nikara. He is the only driver who has experience of this event, which is of course, his home rally. The speed he showed was nothing short of exceptional and without his problems he would have been right up there fighting with the Super 2000 cars - he would also have been, comfortably, the fastest of the conventional Group N machinery. The other driver to come away from here having learned a great deal and showed another great step forward is Jon Williams. I've been absolutely delighted with the way he drove this rally. He was handicapped by a poor seeding on the opening day, but the way he dealt with that and the problems of running in the dust has been tremendous. Since that first day, Jon has driven brilliantly. Unfortunately for Jarkko, Martin, Mark and Nicos, they all retired on the second day and the nature of the damage meant they were unable to return."
Mario Isola, Pirelli Rally Manager said:
"Once again, there were positive aspects of this rally for the Pirelli Star Drivers. We saw Jon Williams again improving his speed. He is now considerably closer to the front-running pace of Group N cars on a round of the World Rally Championship and once again we saw him making the best of his opportunity and getting the full mileage in. For the other drivers, there were some problems - sometimes from the car and sometimes from the drivers themselves. Despite the considerable testing we have done before the start of Rally Finland, there are still some mechanical issues with the car. The team will be continuing to work on those issues before the start of the next event.
"As well as the regular Pirelli Star Driver activity, there was also the Shoot Out for the Northern European territory just before this rally. It was encouraging to see a good level of the drivers participating and it wasn't easy to make this decision of the five drivers to take from the eight attending. We're now looking forward to the next stage of the process in Europe, the Shoot Out final in Austria next month."
Northern European Pirelli Star Driver Shoot Out
The Shoot Out for the Northern European element of the Pirelli Star Driver scheme took place on the eve of Neste Oil Rally Finland. Eight crews took part in fitness and communication tests on Wednesday before driving a mixed-surface stage in the Ruuhimäki area on Thursday. The following five drivers were selected to go forward to the European Shoot Out next month: Ott Tänak (Estonia), Maris Neiksans (Latvia), Vytautas Svedas (Lithuania), Anders Kjaer (Norway) and Victor Henriksson (Sweden).
The next event
Having tackled rough and smooth gravel roads in south and north Europe, the Pirelli Star Drivers will make the switch to asphalt for the penultimate event in the programme. The Movistar RACC Rallye de España (1-4 October) is the only sealed surface rally on the Star Driver calendar for this season, but it is rated as one of the finest rallies of its kind in the world. The event has been a round of the World Rally Championship since 1991, when it ran as a mixed-surface rally. It switched to a wholly asphalt route based in Lloret de Mar two years later and then headed south to a new host town of Salou in 2005, where it has been based ever since.
The results
21st Jon Williams (SA)/George Gwynn (GB) 3hr 23min 40.4sec (5th in Group N)
Mark Tapper (NZ)/Jeff Judd (NZ) Retired - crushed oil filter
Martin Semerád (CZ)/Bohuslav Ceplecha (CZ) Retired - broken sump
Jarkko Nikara (FIN)/Jarkko Kalliolepo (FIN) Retired - broken sump
Nicos Thomas (CY)/Angelos Loizides (CY) Retired - broken oil cooler
