After an 8-day trip to New Zealand, we are now back in Europe in the land of the grand prix on gravel - Finland. This week’s Rally Finland has always been one of my favourites and it is an event where we have more experience at than Rally New Zealand or Australia, having competed here five times before.
Rally Finland could once again be wet, but Paddon is confident.While most other drivers enjoyed some summer break in Europe since Rally Poland, Katie and I headed back to NZ for some PR events and the CRC Speedshow. Despite the colder weather I always love getting home - New Zealand is the best place in the world!
The long plane rides and nights in hotels also gave me more chance to prepare for Finland, fine tuning pacenotes and studying last year’s footage - we are prepared and ready to go.
This event also is close to John Kennard’s heart and not just because his wife Satu is Finnish, or that they spend a lot of time every year in Finland. This will be John's 50 WRC start and also his 30 year anniversary since his first WRC rally, Rally Finland in 1985. So I think that alone is a good reason to try and bring home a good result.
We have learnt some lessons from Poland and hope to put some of these into practice for Finland. However, as our Finland test was before Poland, we will use the pre-event shakedown to confirm some of these and not just with the car set-up, but also my driving.
As two thirds of the stages we have done before, naturally you have more confidence and can drive the car more committed - which is the opposite to Poland where we were attacking stages for the first time.
We are targeting another top five finish - which alone is no easy task. The competition within the top 10 is very close, and the expected wet conditions this week will mean our starting position of 8 will be a disadvantage.
Nevertheless, I’m sure we can counter some of this disadvantage if we do a good job on recce, and drive well on the rally.
- Hayden Paddon
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