WRC FINLAND EXPERIENCE
Witnessing the maddest rally on the calendar
FOR ME IT WAS clear that Meeke will win this rally.”
This is no random spectator being pundit, no pundit being clairvoyant, this is Jost Capito, boss of the all-conquering Volkswagen rally team, a man so highly regarded that McLaren have poached him to run their F1 team next year, being rather forthcoming of a rival’s chances at Rally Finland. And gloomy about his own. “When we came here, we were clear. We had no chance to win.”
So what the hell is going on in the World Rally Championship? How can the fastest driver, in the fastest car, not be in contention for victory? How can it be that a driver that isn’t even registered for the full championship, from a country that isn’t home to a single Rally Finland winner, driving for a team that isn’t even a full factory outfit, be in with a chance to win the most iconic, most prestigious rally of the season? It’s bizarre.
Kris Meeke, driving for Citroen, duly won the 2016 Rally of Finland – the fastest event on the calendar. He went in to the lead on day one, set the fastest times on Ouninpohja, the most iconic stage of the entire season, and stayed in the lead till the end of the rally. It was his second win of 2016; the same number as the unstoppable, untouchable, indisputable fastest-man-in-theWRC, world champion Sebastien Ogier. Who, in the unlikeliest of fashions, beached himself in a ditch in a first gear hairpin. It was a spot where no drama would happen, consequently there were no spectators to help the car out and Ogier took 16 minutes to get going again.
We strolled in to VW Motorsport hospitality at the exact moment when the split times showed Seb Ogier had stopped. Our interview with Capito was in ten minutes. Capito’s eyes were on the same split times and there was no way he was coming out of the situation room to chat with a bunch of journos. We grabbed a beer, a notebook, and went searching for a story until Captio’s minders called us back.
So what’s going on? And how did Ott Tanak (who?) running on DMack tyres (what?) almost win the last round at Poland?
It’s to do with the running order.
To spice things up, the FIA has mandated that the championship standing will determine the start order and that means three time, and defending, champion Seb Ogier starts first on the road. And the problem with that is if the stage has loose gravel, the first few cars end up becoming sweepers, clearing off the marbles, the loose top layer, and leaving a harder surface for the following Michelins (and one set of DMacks) to bite in to. Ott Tanak started Rally Poland tenth on the road, the D-Mack tyres on his Ford Fiesta found better purchase, and he flew, before throwing it away on the very last stage. Kris Meeke started Rally Finland eighth on the road and held it together to become the first Brit to win at Finland. Of course the meek do not inherit the lead of ‘Formula 1 through the forest’. On the legendary Ouninpohja stage, cars are airborne, that’s all four wheels up in the air, 77 times! The total flight time on just one running of the stage, is half a minute! The farthest jump was 57 metres, set by Markko Martin in 2003, at 171kmph! The fastest average speed at Ouninpohja set by Ogier in 2013, is 130.75kmph. That’s the average speed! And just to remind you the stages run through forests, over narrow tracks flanked by stout, graceful, unyielding trees which eventually get pulped into the paper you’re holding in your hand. To reiterate, Kris Meeke is an extraf*cking-ordinary driver.
So too is Ogier, and when we finally catch up with Capito he is at a loss to explain what happened to the world champion. “I am speechless”. Enough said.
NEXT MORNING WE ARE UP AT THE crack of dawn. Well, six is usually the crack of dawn except in Finland, the summer days are as long as the winter nights. And that’s very, very long. We hit the bed at 11pm and it was only just getting dark. I was up at five to bright sunshine streaming in through my windows that overlooked the service park in the heart of Jyväskylä. Over the weekend we had insanely perfect weather, the sun drenching the ridiculously beautiful countryside that is just unending forests peppered with so many lakes, this event was once called the 1000 Lakes Rally. It’s so heart-achingly beautiful you want to apply for whatever the Finnish equivalent of a Green Card is, until you hear that Finland also has amongst the highest suicide rates in the world; their winters are that depressing. Andreas Mikkelsen might not have been driven to suicide but his frustration on the Saturday of the rally must have been mega. The running
order remains the same on Friday and Saturday and Seb Ogier was the designated sweeper except he had brake troubles and had to effect repairs, which promoted Mikkelsen to the top of the running order. And no matter how hard he tried there was no way for the Rally Poland winner, the man with the second largest contingent of fans (from across the border in Norway), to challenge Meeke. He later told us, “We could win stages with this speed in other rallies but here we have no chance. When Seb had those problems, we were first on the road so that was really difficult with loose layer on top of gravel, it’s really slippery. Normally in Finland it’s not a problem. This year for some reason, it’s very dry now so it’s more problem than usual.”
So two VWs were out of contention for the podium and that left Jari-Matti Latvala, who has won the event for the past two years, to salvage Finnish pride. Our first glimpse of the action was at a jump on the second stage, a relatively secret location that meant there were only, oh, five thousand fans. And these fans, every single one, pay something like 25 euros to access the stage, and 15 euros for the privilege of parking their car and walking 2 kilometres to access the stage. It was all worth it. You’ve seen videos of rally cars flying over the yumps in Finland but nothing prepares you for the speed, the height, the airtime, the utterly breathtaking spectacle of a rally car getting airborne at 150kmph, driver flat on the gas, revs banging against the limiter, the crazy distance they cover without the wheels on the ground, and boom, gone in a flurry of noise and dust.
Later we motor over to the legendary Ouninpohja stage, the junction where there’s a sea of spectators. Kids in prams, kids playing with their dogs, kids holding their father’s hands dreaming of one day being a rally driver, kids clearing up the empty beer cans and doing a damn good job of ensuring zero rubbish anywhere, teenagers flat on their faces after having had too many of those beers, smoke curling out of barbeques, strategically placed boom boxes to make sure everybody is in the right mood, fans carrying ladders for a better view, fans perched on their camper vans chugging more beers, huge Finnish and Norwegian flags fluttering in the breeze, families soaking in the sun on the grass banks, and a quiet couple in front of me attired in VW merchandise from head to toe, all by themselves, soaking in the atmosphere. I would later be introduced to them – they were Seb Ogier’s parents! The cars then come, sideways through the junction, a roar from the crowds as the Scandinavian drivers, Latvala and Mikkelsen come through, a deathly silence when Meeke goes through, refusing to do what the whole of Scandinavia was praying for – make a mistake.
We head back to service park in the evening and get an opportunity to ask Ogier about his mistake. “I don't know if you’ve seen the video (oh yes we did!), it’s a very unlucky mistake. I was really pushing and I took a few centimetres on the inside to get more grip and carry more speed in the corner but it was softer than I expected, my inside wheel got stuck into it, which means when I was back on the gas my car immediately snapped around. I was in the ditch and it was so soft that I was stuck in it.
“The whole weekend I have been
fast
everywhere and here I was stuck stupidly. At least it's better this way than like getting stuck in 6th gear in the forest, like few guys did today.”
Oh yes, when you crash in Finland you C-RA-S-H. On Friday, the Saudi driver Yazeed AlRajhi crashed metres before the stage finish; he was carrying so much speed that he crossed the finish line, sliding on his roof (YouTube it!). Many more drivers would crash over the weekend, the last of whom was Pontus Tidemand wrapping himself round a tree while running second in the WRC2 category. Name sounds familiar to you? He was Gaurav Gill’s teammate in the APRC last year. The WRC2 was won by another Skoda Fabia R2 driven by Esapekka Lappi. Again name sound familiar? He was Gill’s teammate in 2013, who Gill beat to the APRC championship! Both Lappi and Tidemand are factory Skoda drivers in the WRC2, in the outfit that is considered as a sort of junior team to VW’s full WRC effort. Even Hayden Paddon who, in his third year with the works Hyundai WRC squad is showing fantastic pace, rallied against Gill in the APRC and the Kiwi very candidly told me last year that on some rallies like Malaysia, the Indian was unstoppable. Gill though is still stuck in the APRC; this is probably his tenth season.
I ask Captio if anything can be done about it. “We are in contact with Volkswagen India, they give us information, same as what we do in South Africa and in China. Skoda is doing the lower category for the (VW) Group and there he can be in a position to learn but when he comes to us, he has to be in the position to win the rally otherwise we can’t win the championships.”
Staying on the subject of India, I ask about the possibility of a WRC round in India. “We would love to have a rally in India. It is valid to have rallies in important markets, considering the growing importance of Asia.”
To somebody familiar with the struggles Indian rallying has been going through over the past few years this might sound hilariously optimistic but don’t forget the FIA President himself has gone on record about his desire for a WRC round in India. And this December, India will host the APRC season ender, where Gill will be driving the Skoda R2. In fact, quite
a few eyes will be on that event because Gill’s teammate this year, Fabian Kreim, is a German and the VW Group are very keen to have a homeboy in their premier rally outfit. Could the rub off be that this is the year Gill finally gets noticed?
On the subject of frustrations, at least Seb Ogier has something to look forward to in the second half of this season. Unlike gravel rallies, running first on the road is an advantage on tarmac rallies and with most of the upcoming rallies running on sealed surfaces, Ogier will fly. “The good news is that the tarmac events are coming. It’s not the surface I prefer but I know that tarmac will give me a chance to fight. I have been in this position for 6 months which has been a very, very hard time for me.”
Ogier will bounce back and it’ll be a brave man to bet against a fourth WRC title.