The new Citroën DS3 S1600

This is Citroën's new car for World Rally Championship 2011 season, the DS3 S1600.

Sporting the 1600cc naturally aspirated engine and front wheel drive for S1600 homologation, it will be fitted with a turbocharger and 4 wheel drive for WRC.
The article was released in a French magazine called Echappement. I believe the car is still under development but testing with Dani Sordo and Sebastien Loeb will begin soon.

BP Ford Fiesta S2000 Test Mikko Hirvonen

Mikko was testing the new Fiesta for the coming Monte Carlo rally.

Arctic Lapland Rally, China and others.

I believe many of you have heard that Kimi Räikkönen will participate Arctic Lapland Rally in January with Citroën's WRCar. Now news have come up that Heikki Kovalainen will do this too.

Kovalainen is driving for Lotus in the 2010 Formula 1 season and Lotus has been owned by Proton for a while, so its not a surprise that Heikki will participate with Proton's Satria Neo S2000 rally car, that'll make its WRC debut in 2010 aswell, in Lapland.

Surely Arctic Lapland rally will prove to be quite exciting rally for both the teams and spectators.

Last week, Jussi Välimäki drove out and crashed into a rock in the Longyou rally in China. Jussi himself was unscathed, but his co-driver Marko Sallinen suffered hair fractures in his ribs.

But as of now, both are healthy and will participate in the Guizhou Bailing rally that will end the season in China. Also participating this rally is another finn, Juha Salo with his co-driver Mika Stenberg.

And for the end, Antero Visaheimo made a great piece for Ralli.net.


World Opening night, Karlstad, Sweden

See you after Christmas, until then, happy holidays!

Bosse participating WRC Sweden

Again, I am late with these news, but I only update my blog on saturdays, please bear with me.

So Marcus Grönholm, true to his earlier words, is participating in WRC rallies next year aswell, and will start off with Sweden in his fellow Finn's, Mattias Thermann's, team Therminator. Both will be driving Ford Focus WRCs, and I hope best to both men and quite likely they will easily find sponsors with Bosse in the team and hopefully they will be able to participate in other coming WRC rallies aswell, at least Neste Oil Rally Finland.

Some new and old drivers, also Finland!

As most of you might have heard, Kimi Räikkönen's deal with Citroën is now official. He'll be a partner to Sebastien Ogier in Citroën's junior team and he'll drive all 12 rallies on the schedule. Rumor also has it that he will be participating Arctic Lapland Rally in January with the Citroën C4 WRC too.

Mikko Hirvonen was confirmed for driving the new Ford Fiesta S2000 in the up coming Monte Carlo Rally. Other choices included Markko Märtin, which would have been a nice welcome back for him.

Citroën's first team with Sebastien Loeb and Daniel Sordo will be driving either Citroën's new S2000 car based on the C3 or the C4 WRC10. This hasn't been confirmed as of yet.

And since this entry would otherwise be rather short, I'm going to tell you a bit about my schedule for the coming year.

I will be attending ABC-Ralli at Kouvola and Riihimäki-ralli at Riihimäki in January, unfortunately the long distance to Rovaniemi prohibits me from going to see Räikkönen there, if the rumors keep true.

ABC-Ralli is a miniature rally, having only 3 special stages in about 30 kilometer lenght, I believe there will be about 100-200 participants with cars ranging from Rally Trophy to Group N.

Riihimäki-ralli is a week later, its a full F-Cup rally, so about 8 special stages and around 60-100 kilometers. Since its F-Cup, there will be mostly Group F cars, but I believe they have class for older 4WD cars as well, so Group N, Group A and WRC wouldn't be surprising.

See you there!

Neste Oil Rally Finland 2010

As some of you may know, in 2010 Neste Oil Rally Finland will be 60 years old. Known before as the 1000 Lakes Rally, we have come a long way. 1000 Lakes Rally used to be a challenge of endurance. The start was at Helsinki, and the stages went by Tampere and Hämeenlinna and the teams went through nights. Today WRC rallies have seldomly more than 300 kilometers of stages and the last stage for the day is finished well before darkness.

But with 2010 Neste Oil Rally Finland, AKK has decided to go back into that time a bit. They are including a special stage in Jyväskylä that will determine the starting order for the rally itself, and hopefully this stage will go by Harju as it used to back in the days. Of course, this means that nor Killeri or Vetomies challenge will either be part of NORF 2010. Killeri isnt that much of a loss, since its costs to rent have gone up and not as many people show up there than it used. The drop of Vetomies however is a bit disconcerting, but hopefully they will hold it with some other rally this year.

Also a new thing, the competition days will be from thursday to saturday, dropping sunday off completely. With the same amount of stages, this means longer times on the stages during a single day, so the endurance element is getting back to rallying. And hopefully we'll be seeing people actually rallying with lights on aswell for a change!

After the rally, AKK will hold a great party to remember to the colourful history of NORF at Paviljonki. Paviljonki has programme during the rally aswell, of course about the history and future of the rally. From what I hear, many rally cars from the 50s to the Group B monsters and current generation WRCars will make an appearance.

However, these changes dont come with all great news, besides the aforementioned dropping of Killeri and Vetomies challenge, there is also the problem of possible traffic congestion. Since the stages are more packed to a day, more people will be out spectating, but hopefully this wont prove a huge challenge for AKK.

I will be dying to see how these changes will affect the NORF, and hopefully in a good way.

S2000 confused

There has been a lot of confusion, at least on my part, about what and who will run in WRC 2010 season.

From what I have gathered, by reading various articles online and offline and talking to people in the know, is that the WRC cup, which will run the S2000 cars, will start in 2010. Im not entirely sure how WRC cup differs from the actual WRC, but the main difference is that WRCars will not run in it.

Most manufacturers already have a S2000, Ford just publishing its Fiesta. Citroen is developing a S2000 from C3, Proton has the Satria Neo and Skoda, Volkswagen and Peugeot have cars too.

Confirmed factory efforts for WRC cup are from Ford and Citroen at the very least, and Proton's and Skoda's participation is pretty firmly established as well. About Volkswagen and Peugeot I haven't heard, but it would be swell for Peugeot to return to World Championship level rallying.

And then there are the privateers, since S2000 are very cheap, just around 200 000 Euros for a used one, compared to the millions that the WRCars cost, we should see a lot more privateer efforts in WRC cup. One such is the new, yet to be actually found, Monster Energy World Rally Team, whose owner and first driver Ken Block would make a debut in WRC with the new Ford Fiesta S2000. Many people in national level rallying in Europe have S2000 cars aswell, and it would be great to see them get the funding needed to participate in WRC cup, at least if WRC comes to their home country, the more the merrier.

And about WRCars, they will be allowed to run in 2010, but not in WRC cup, and in 2011 they arent allowed to run at all anymore.

If you have any questions, comment on this post or email me, I'll try to find answers to them.

So it begins

And so I have finally decided to start writing a blog in English about rallying.

This blog will be about rallying Finland and in the world. I will be sharing interesting things from RallyBuzz and YouTube and also post my own reports from Finnish rallies I attend.

I hope we will all have fun. See you on the stages.