ROUND 3 | RALLY FINLAND | 13TH - 16TH NOV

WEATHER
Forecast is for mostly sunshine over the first two legs, but there's a chance some rain could roll in for leg 3. Be ready!

Schedule up.

And we are go!

I ACTUALLY FINISHED. HOW?

I do not expect to be doing the same. :p

well that could have gone a shit tonne better, damage got so bad that the car was so hard to control, in the end i had a rally ending crash, oh well, better luck next time

Well, ramPage really got nice pace towards the end of the race, couldnt do anything about it. Well done. Here's my whole rally in VOD as I streamed it live with wheelcam:

I pinpointed two moments that sum up my Finland experience.



The first was a minor tumble.



The second had a more "race-over" feel to it.

they actually made me laugh, the captions are spot on haha

So, 4 things.

1) Wheel fell of the desk during stage two
2) Steering felt all wrong
3) Found my pedals are spiking
4) DNF

GG

I finished!

SS1 - A bit uncomfortable to start, couple of spins
SS2 - Oh dear. Slid wide and hit a telegraph pole very early on - right rear tyre instantly down to the rim. I made the mistake of deciding to continue with one less tyre rather than take the penalty for replacing it. A slow time and plenty of damage resulted.
SS3 - Good stage!
SS4 - Drat. Hit a rock early on by turing in too early for a corner and got some damage. Two monster shunts later in the stage did not help my cause, the second of which causing a puncture but only in the last part of the stage.
SS5-7 - Generally okay aside from the odd spin here and there.
SS8 - Demolished a telegraph pole with the front of the car early in the stage. No punctures, still managed to drag the car to the end!



Hardly very elegant!

My accidents on stage 4...  

For me and Mr Waring this was the toughest of rallies, dont know how you guys at the top do it......

SS1 - went well, no incidents and a solid time.
SS2 - On a 7 minute stage i managed to run incident free until i reached the square left (easiest corner on the stage) and looped it. DOH
SS3 - Had a nightmare in the final two sectors, hit 2 trees and then got a puncture on a big jump, and finished it off with a roll.... so frustrating

Had huge damage (radiator and exhaust between 40 and 50) and that would be my car badly damaged for the rest of the event.

SS4 - Went really well, few hairy moments but a top 25 wr time. Best stage of the rally.
SS5 - Another solid run, no major issues, decent time.
SS6 - Was going well until i was distracted by the marks on the gravel turning right over a crest, had fully commited to a right hander before reaching the top of the crest and discovering it was a left. Straight into the trees but got away with it. Lack of concentration but got lucky this time.

Again huge damage, Stratos is so fragile over these jumps! Even without the impacts the damage was still huge. Engine kept fizzing and giving me heart attacks because it sounded like a puncture.....

SS7 - 2 Spins but not the end of the world, 10 seconds slower than the first run through this stage.
SS8 - Solid finish, just wanted to get to the end without major incident.

Amazed i made it to the end, didnt enjoy this one but huge credit to those who can drive it quickly! Mind Boggling.....

Goodluck to everyone who is yet to cras.. drive.

Crashed because of pacenotes failing to mention an approaching corner. Hopefully that gets improved. On the longer stage 4 it was fine, but on stage 5 which is the latter half the pace notes were different and shit.

Too many times losing time to wrongly graded 3 when its a 4, or 4 when its a 5

Think Finland pacenotes are definitely not as good as Monte Carlo for example. They really do lack urgency in some situations, if a 5 right approches into a 3 left he needs to say 5 right braking into 3 left and he didn't, all he told me was to stay right at the crest and left me to jump and smash into a tree at 90mph with a 50g impact.

I'm pretty sure this is the first time in my entire life I'm happy with an 8th place!

I still have some probems with some very short freezes, not close to as bad as greece but it's still there, this does of course not help but don't think it really affected me too much.

I replaced my g27 wheel with a t300rs last week and still not fully used to the wheel, I actually got more experience doing this event than the practise before it, could genuinly feel an improvement in the event, got much more confident and improved times.

I saw that most people had had incidents so I decided (also with a new wheel) to take it easy and maybe be able to get a point or so.

After the first stage I was back in 17th after had taken it slow, I knew I was gonna improve tho with me improving my pace and people making mistakes so I wasn't really nervous about the poor result.

In the 2nd stage I was going slow and cautious and still managed to get a puncture from landing of a jump.

From there on I made a few small mistakes, but nothing too big, I improved my pace a lot (still not going 100% because I just wanted to finish).

I really hope no one fast is yet to go so I can keep my point!

So I started doing some last minute tuning with my setup and tried it out on one stage. It worked like a charm. I set a great time offline and did decent in the first stage.

Then I found out on the other stages that my car doesn't take certain bumps well due to the suspension changes I made. Which caused havoc and threw me off. I suffered a puncture on the next 4 stages. When I get into final service I load up the default setup and find out that I am actually going much faster with the default.

Lesson learned. Don't make last minute changes to your setup before a rally until you actually test it on MULTIPLE stages.

On another note I'd love to watch one of the top 6 70's cars' pov! Amazing pace by those!

Race Fanatic wrote:On another note I'd love to watch one of the top 6 70's cars' pov! Amazing pace by those!

Me too!

Had to sit out this week because of an infection in my right big toe. Probably wouldn't have done very well anyways though.

Just glad that's over. Was happy to make it as far as SS7, lol.

Managed to stay under 71 mins, Winner time right here.

Ouch

Was a good rally till I pushed a bit to hard on SS4 had a spin and got a flat. It all crazy after that with a few tree clips & flats on SS5/6, then a terminal damage on SS7 lol.

Bring on the next event  and well done to everyone who finished

Considering that finland is up there on the worst rallys for me, getting 2nd place is huge

Had a couple of clips into trees, had to recover car once, in a couple of times my rally could be ended but manage to save the car (dont know how but i did it lol).

Overall a very very very happy considering i dont like finland that much.

Now on to Germany, Monte Carlo i crashed when leading but im hoping to this one as i feel more confortable driving on the tarmac.

PS: Race Fanatic, i dont have any video from my stages on the rally but i could probably record one later if you want

Pedro Melim wrote:Considering that finland is up there on the worst rallys for me, getting 2nd place is huge

Had a couple of clips into trees, had to recover car once, in a couple of times my rally could be ended but manage to save the car (dont know how but i did it lol).

Overall a very very very happy considering i dont like finland that much.

Now on to Germany, Monte Carlo i crashed when leading but im hoping to this one as i feel more confortable driving on the tarmac.

PS: Race Fanatic, i dont have any video from my stages on the rally but i could probably record one later if you want

Haha, would love to, the kind of pace you have in the 70's car is quite amazing imo!

When are standings going to be updated...