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.