On Saturday, and the night before of the rally, Kanta-Häme got lot of new heavy snow. Despite the rally organizer's attempts of plowing the route, a lot of loose snow was left on the roads. The driving conditions in the SM Auto Sorsa Riihimäki ralli in the Riihimäki and Loppi areas were challenging.

 

Emil Lindholm and Reeta Hämäläinen, who started the route in Riihimäki as the first car, were forced to drive in the snowfall plowing the way to others.

 

After five special stages the duo was still driving head-to-head with Teemu Asunmaa, but in the third to last and on the final special stage of the day, Lindholm spun in the snow and lost his chance to score Finnish Championship points.

”It was a challenging rally - I can admit that, but there were also good moments during the day. Despite the situation of starting as the first car, we were still driving same speed with other top cars. My pace notes had mistakes with two special stages, which resolved this rally for us. We had a wrong note twice that led us driving off the road”, Lindholm tells.

 

”The first of these happened at special stage 6 where I quickly realized that my note was not like the turn ahead. We spun between the snow banks but were able to continue fairly quickly”, Lindholm says.

 

"The last special stage of the rally already had a few places where my note was clearly not correct. Usually I don’t make mistakes in my notes, but now that’s what happened. When I noticed that we were going to spin, I turned my car into the field. There was so much snow that we got stuck. We had to shovel the bottom of our car out of the snow before we could continue our rally”, Lindholm says.

 

The situation took almost 10 minutes extra time and Lindholm was dropped out of the SM1 class’ top spots and ended up in the 32nd place in the overall competition.

”Only two points from this round. We knew that the driving conditions would be difficult, but we would need some points from Riihimäki. Now we got none. It was a challenging day. In terms of speed and our pace, we were where we expectedus to be. We got a good lesson to take home from here”, Lindholm sums up.

 

The winter season of the Finnish Rally Championship series will continue with the third round of the series on 4-5th ofMarch in Kuopio. Before that Emil Lindholm and Reeta Hämäläinen will drive Toksport WRT’s Škoda in the second World Rally Championship round of the season in Sweden.

Final results: SM Auto Sorsa Riihimäki-ralli:

1. Teemu Asunmaa – Ville Mannisenmäki Škoda Fabia Rally2 EVO 57:49,8

2. Mikko Heikkilä – Samu Vaaleri Škoda Fabia Rally2 EVO + 22,3

3. Juha Salo – Mikko Markkula Škoda Fabia Rally2 EVO + 38,9 

…

32. Emil Lindholm – Reeta Hämäläinen Škoda Fabia Rally2 EVO + 10:27,9

 

FRC points 2/7 rounds:

1. Mikko Heikkilä Škoda 38

2. Emil Lindholm Škoda 36

3. Egon Kaur (EE) Volkswagen 35

4. Teemu Asunmaa Škoda 29

5. Juha Salo Škoda 28