Blogs
WRC Pirelli driver blog - Mikko Hirvonen
Blog two: Saturday 1 August. 2130hrs.
Hi everyone!
It's been a long day. We arrived in the service park this morning in the pouring rain at 0600hrs. It was miserable but worked in my favour and it seems that the rain dance I did last night worked! I really wanted some rain overnight to make my job of running first on the road easier.
I've had a great day. I started this morning with only a 3.3 second lead over the Frenchman and now look - it's 32 seconds! It's such an incredible feeling. I can't describe it. I'm 47kms away from finishing Rally Finland tomorrow afternoon and I'm still leading tonight.
Actually as a team we've had a great day. Jari-Matti was really sick this morning but he's still managed to be quicker than Dani Sordo and be third tonight.
I've done all my end of day jobs of the press conference, many interviews and autograph signing and now I'm off to get some sleep for what could be one of the most exciting days of my life tomorrow. I'm feeling quite calm about it. Mr Relaxed I am tonight!
I was going to say 'speak to you tomorrow' but if I'm honest, if I win this rally then I'll come back to you on Tuesday to tell you how good the party was on Sunday night!
Keep watching me tomorrow and keep your fingers crossed.
Kiitos
Mikko
For more about Pirelli in the WRC visit:
www.pirellityre.com
WRC Pirelli driver blog - Mikko Hirvonen
Blog one: Thursday 30 July. 2100hrs.
"It's great here! I just love it. This is my home rally in my home town with all my family and friends here supporting me - it doesn't get better than that does it?
I'm having a good week actually. Our recce went well which is always a good start. Then last night Ford announced that they're going to compete in the WRC for the next two years and that they'd like myself and Jarmo to continue to drive for them. Which is fantastic news and a big weight off my mind.
Today's been busy. My PR team has kept me busy from the moment I got up this morning! Shall I tell you about my day? I did two runs on the shakedown stage this morning. We had a good test last week, so two runs was all we wanted to achieve.
I've done more interviews than I can count, photoshoots, autograph signing, the FIA Press Conference (which wasn't too bad because everybody wanted to talk to Kimi Raikkonen!), I've been to a Rally Travel function, done more interviews and finally managed to eat something before I went to Killeri - and it tasted really good as normal (thanks to Mick the Chef!).
We've just made a good time on the Super Special so I'm happy but really looking forward to a good sleep tonight and getting going tomorrow. Actually I'm more than looking forward to it, I'm so excited...!
Wish me luck, keep an eye on me on wrc.com and I'll come back to you over the weekend to let you know how it's going - and hopefully how far ahead of Monsieur Loeb I am. Fingers crossed everyone.
Kiitos to you all
Mikko
For more about Pirelli in the WRC visit:
www.pirellityre.com
WRC Pirelli driver blog - Jari-Matti Latvala
Blog two: Friday 24 July. 0900hrs.
"I'm back at home taking a breather after two days of testing in my home country for next weekend's Rally Finland. What a test! I completed 260km on both days for a total of 520km - I don't think I've ever spent so much time behind the wheel during a test in my life.
The first day was on a narrow and technical road and then we changed to a big, wide fast road for the second day of the type that Finland is famous for. We eventually stopped last night because the road was getting too rough.
It was really all about fine tuning. My Ford Focus RS WRC was perfect in Poland last month and Finland will be similar with lots of fast sections. The only change I made was to make the dampers a few clicks harder to ensure they are ideal for the bigger jumps that we'll find in Finland. My times on the test stage were very consistent so I'm really happy and looking forward to my favourite rally of the season.
My problems on Rally Poland are behind me now. Mikko is challenging hard for the drivers' title so my tactics for the final four rounds of the year are to drive to support him, and do as much as I can to help him. He drove superbly in Greece and Poland so I hope he can repeat his successes in Finland next weekend.
Recce starts on Tuesday so I'll have a long weekend to relax and prepare and then - off we go!"
Jari-Matti
For more about Pirelli in the WRC visit:
www.pirellityre.com
WRC Pirelli driver blog - Jari-Matti Latvala
Blog one: Tuesday 21 July. 1500hrs.
"It seems a long time since Rally Poland so it's good to be back in my preparation routine for another event - and they don't come much bigger or better than Rally Finland!
It will be quite special for me to drive my home event, knowing that my family and friends are watching. It brings a little more pressure but it's a nice feeling all the same.
I've had the time to relax a little since the last round. I spent a few days on holiday in the south of France and I'm also taking up golf for fun, so I've been buying the right equipment for that. Like rallying, that's not a cheap sport, but I suppose when you compare the cost of a set of clubs against the cost of a Ford Focus RS WRC then I should be happy that I don't have to buy the car!
Tomorrow I start testing for the rally near Jamsa. Mikko tested on Monday and Tuesday and I have a couple of days now before going home again for the weekend to relax. Tomorrow's roads are technical and narrow while Thursday's roads are big, wide and fast with a couple of big jumps.
So there is a little bit of everything that means myself and Miikka can work with the team to finalise our set-up and develop a good feeling with the car. We won't be looking for anything too radical - it's more a question of fine tuning what we already have rather than anything new. I'll let you know how it went on Friday."
Jari-Matti
For more about Pirelli in the WRC visit:
www.pirellityre.com
Matthew Wilson’s WRC season
In this latest blog from Airwaves Pro Matthew Wilson, we find out what he thought of his most recent outing in Greece, as well as his views on the upcoming Rally Poland and how he plans to tackle the remainder of the season.
“It was such a shame on the first day in Greece that we had a problem with the oil cooler, there was literally nothing we could do. Luckily we stopped soon enough that we didn’t damage the engine and we were able to continue. I was so frustrated at the end of the first day, thinking that we had nothing left to compete for in the rally and valuable points had slipped out of my grasp.
“Often in those situations you have two options; either you retire or you set about getting the car ready for the next day to really kick up a gear and show everybody what you would have been capable of. Scott, my co-driver, and I decided on the way out to the stages on the second day that we were going to give it our all and go for it. Saturday and Sunday we had two cracking days finishing in the top six on every stage and even winning stage 15. This was a great step forward and showed the rest of the field what I am capable of. My attitude was so positive and confident and the pacenotes were spot on. It was so pleasing to get such consistent times and really capitalise where other drivers were falling on Greece’s tough road conditions.
“It was a bit strange for some of the drivers and from a Ford point of view we had to capitalise when Loeb crashed out. Later Dani Sordo and Henning hit the same rock; it goes to show you never know in rallying what is going to happen, so it is always worth pushing on.
“It was also great for the team that I managed to pick up some manufacturers' points and the quote from the team boss about my driving was great, as was the reaction from Stobart’s Andrew Tinkler. I would love to get more of that and I will be pushing in Poland with the thought of that in my mind.
“I really hope to be able to carry that speed into Poland, the aim is to pick up where I left off and with such a short break in between I should be able to kick on and continue my quest for my first podium.
“Poland will be exciting as none of the current drivers has raced there before. That will certainly play into my hands, as experience will not come into it so much. I have heard various reports about the terrain and it will be crucial to take our time on the recce and make sure the notes are spot on. This is exciting and it’s such a level playing field until we see the stages.
"I’d like some more driver’s points this time out. If Mikko [Hirvonen] does as well, as he usually does on new rallies, then Ford should come away from this rally with a good result. We have to capitalise on the potential loss of confidence from Sebastien Loeb following on from his crash and maintain good pace and race rhythm.”
WRC Pirelli driver blog - Patrik Sandell
Blog three: Wednesday 17 June. 0900hrs.
“This Friday is one of the most important days in Sweden - Midsummer’s Day. I live in Östersund, 600kms north of where the Swedish Rally is, and on Friday my girlfriend Caroline and I will travel a further 180kms north to her summer cottage where we will relax and do some fishing. It really is in the middle of nowhere and it’s very beautiful.
It’s an amazing time of year, because in northern Sweden it is light almost all day. It goes a little bit dark between two and three in the morning, but not properly dark because the sky is still bright. The rest of the time you can see the sun, so it can be quite hard to sleep. Still, this is a fantastic time of year, because in winter it’s exactly the opposite and it’s dark nearly all of the time!
I’m looking forward to this weekend, because it will make up for last weekend - which was the most disappointing one of my rally career. Our engine problem at the start of Day 2 of the Acropolis Rally means that we are no longer fighting for the P-WRC title, because Nasser [Al-Attiyah] is eleven points ahead and we have one nominated rally left and the most we can score is ten points.
What’s really frustrating is that it’s only June and we have to wait until at least January to begin to fight for a world title again.
The engine problem wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t Emil’s [Axelsson, co-driver] fault and it wasn’t the team’s fault - but the engine wasn’t working as it should and it eventually cost us thirty minutes. The best way to get over such disappointment was to go out on Sunday and have some fun in the car. Our plan was to set the fastest P-WRC time on the opening stage of Day 3 to show ourselves and the rest of the world that this is what we can do, and we did it. We drove as fast as possible on Day 3 without going over the limit - after all, we wanted to get our Red Bull Skoda Fabia back to the finish without damaging it.
As you can imagine, we didn’t have a party on Sunday night. We were all very disappointed and we just had a quiet dinner in our hotel before travelling home on Monday. It was a strange weekend, but having to overcome things like this is all part of the game. I’m very competitive and a bad loser, but this is not the end of the story, nor the end of my career. Things like this are hard to take, but they make you stronger.
Wales Rally GB is my only remaining round of the P-WRC this year, so I am looking to see what rallies we can do over the summer. To be world champion, you have to be good on all types of surfaces, so I would like to do more Tarmac rallies and develop my skills there. I have done many gravel and snow rallies in my career, but Tarmac is the one surface I need more experience on. We are looking at the calendar now to see what’s coming up; nothing has been decided just yet.
In two weeks time, Emil and I will be at a rally school, together with the Swedish Federation, helping to find new young rally talent from Sweden. People aged between sixteen and twenty, who have a competition licence, come to a rally school and we will be there to tell them everything we know and share our experiences with them. We will do a similar day in another part of Sweden in the autumn, and even though I am still quite young and in the middle of my own career, it is an important thing to do - and something I really enjoy.
For sure I will be at Rally Finland - if not driving, then watching and catching up with friends. I’m aiming to win P-WRC on Rally GB and finish the year on a high, but for me that is too long to be away from the WRC!”
For more about Pirelli in the WRC visit:
www.pirellityre.com
WRC Pirelli driver blog - Patrik Sandell
Blog two: Saturday 13 June. 2100hrs.
"It's amazing that any of the cars contesting this year's Acropolis Rally are still in one piece! It really is a miracle. Everybody knows that the stages are very rough, but now also this year the speeds are very high. The rally gets faster and faster every year and the stages are still as rough as they've always been. I feel like I will lose a wheel at every corner, because we have to drive over such big rocks and the vibration comes up through the car and through the steering wheel. It's no exaggeration - this really does happen on every corner; and there are an awful lot of corners!
For me, rally driving is not about going flat-out everywhere; it's about being clever and driving flat-out where you can. We did a very exact recce for this rally, and we made very detailed pace notes to show where we must be slow and where we can make up time. When Emil [Axelsson] says to me slow down, I back right off because we have seen that this place is a car-breaker. But when he says flat-out, it's maximum attack.
We knew that there were sections on Day 1 where we could push really hard, and we did. Lambros [Athanassoulas] knows these roads well, so we weren't disappointed to be behind him in second position - after all, Skoda was in a one-two position. There was only 8.2 seconds between us at the end of Day 1, and I was really pleased because everything had gone to plan on the stages that suited our S2000 car.
Day 2 was going to be more difficult for us, because the stages were narrow, twisty and rough - better suited to the Subarus and Mitsubishis; but now they would have to push and take risks in the worst conditions to overtake us.
In Greece you expect a steering arm to break, a wheel to buckle, a puncture or the engine to overheat. What you don't expect is to pick up an engine problem on the road section to the opening stage. Okay, this is rallying and it can happen anywhere, but it was really frustrating for it to happen when we had done so much of the hard work, our strategy was going to plan and we were in a good position.
In the stage the engine started to run on three cylinders, then two, then it stopped. Everything looked normal under the bonnet and we couldn't find out what the problem was. We disconnected a sensor and the engine fired up, but by then we'd been stopped for 26 minutes.
We're still in the rally, but now it's impossible for us to score points. We will push hard on the final day and try and set fastest stage times, but the championship is not looking so good for us now. I really don't wish anyone to have any problems on the final day, but that might be the only thing that will keep our P-WRC title hopes alive. Nasser [Al-Attiyah], Armindo [Araújo] and I only have one rally left, Wales Rally GB, so if either of them wins here it will be impossible for me to win the title. If they hit trouble the fight might be still on and I'll go to GB still aiming to be world champion."
For more about Pirelli in the WRC visit:
www.pirellityre.com
