Crowdfunded Virves confident he is doing the ‘right things’

In 2022 it was Virves who was celebrating in Greece when he held off Pajari and Jon Armstrong to secure the Junior WRC championship but last weekend the tables were turned and on this occasion the result went the way of the Toyota-driving Finn, courtesy of his quicker time through the opening stage of the event.

A second place looked all-but certain for the 24-year-old Estonian in his Škoda Fabia RS Rally2 as he trailed his Finnish rival by 28.5sec going into the Wolf Power Stage. However, a Pajari puncture saw the Finn nurse his car through the stage, dropping exactly 28.5sec to Virves, leading to the identical times.

Speaking with media at the end of Sunday, Virves was in a reflective mood. “I am not really sad, but it makes me think more about every little moment in the rally. If you lose the win by such a little margin you start thinking about every small mistake during the rally and there was more than one of them.”

One of those moments was on that decisive Wolf Power Stage. “We were pushing well on the Power Stage but towards the end we had to back off a little bit because of an issue with the gear lever, I was trying to save it and not break. If you now look that we missed the win by 0.04 then…what can I say…

“Overall, we must be happy, we had a good pace when we were feeling comfortable.”

Virves had arrived at the start line in Greece thanks to a crowdfunding campaign, with the former junior champion blown away by the amount of the support he had received. He felt his performance had done enough to repay the faith his fans had put in him.

“For sure this was and still is a bit surprising that there were so many people ready to help. I hope it shows we are doing the right thing with people wanting to be involved.”