Rally Finland 1999

Rally Finland once again lived up to its reputation as the Grand Prix of gravel roads as all the top drivers battled over secods and tenths of seconds on the extremely fast and jumpy roads. The nature of the rally is clearly illustrated by the results of the 11km long first stage, where five fastest drivers finished within one second. This also shows how evenly matched the teams are, and two new teams have now climbed in the absolute top category.

Harri Rovanpera shows how to jump with the new Seat Cordoba E2 (Photo by Seat Sport)

The Evo 2 version of the Seat Cordoba introduced here seems to be a significant step forward for the Spanish team. Evo 2 showed very good speed right from the start of Rally Finland in the hands of Harri Rovanpera and the 24 year old comet of this season, Toni Gardemeister. Peugeot entered its first gravel event with the new 206 with three cars driven by Marcus Gronholm, Francois Delecour and Gilles Panizzi. For Delecour and Panizzi the rally was more about testing and learning, but Gronholm was really charging and found himself in the top of the field after the first day.

The Subarus were going also well, and, quite surprisingly, Richard Burns took the lead on SS3 and kept it until the final stage of the day. On the last stage, the Hippos super special, he applied some cold-nerved tactics, stopping just before the finish for couple of seconds and dropping himself to 3rd place, so that he wouldn't have to be the first car on the road on the next day, as the first cars had to clear the road surface from loose dust and small stones, which made the road very slippery.

Marcus Gronholm and the new Peugeot 206 WRC (Photo by Peugeot Sport)

Gronholm, who had been second before Burns' tactics didn't mind taking the top position, overnight lead was great news for the Peugeot team. Although complaining about the lack of top end speed, Gronholm's performance was very good indeed with the new car. Burns' team-mate Juha Kankkunen, was second overnight. 4th was Thomas Radstrom as the best of the Fords; Colin McRae had setup problems all through the day. Carlos Sainz was 5th and Tommi Makinen, who suffered from being the first car on the road, was 6th, but the time difference to the leader was only 18 secs. Makinen, hunting for the 6th consecutive win in Rally Finland, was still very confident and said that nothing has been decided yet. Didier Auriol was 7th, followed by Rovanpera and McRae. Gardemeister had some good stage times but a couple of spins dropped him out of the top 10.

The second and longest day of the rally was run under the domination of the grand old master, Juha Kankkunen, who took the lead from Gronholm on the second stage of the day and kept it despite furious attacks from behind. Tommi Makinen had started his charge and was closing, but on the longest stage of the rally he had to retire with a clutch problem. The same stage was difficult for others as well, due to variety of reasons. Thomas Radstrom crashed his Ford Focus from 4th position and dropped to 22nd. Freddy Loix also rolled and was able to continue. Many drivers had punctures, including Burns and Auriol. Auriol's Toyota had all through the day a mysterious problem which made the car almost undrivable and he really had to struggle to keep the car on the road even on straights. Carlos Sainz' Toyota was, however, going very nicely indeed, and he took several stage wins, moving to second position, 10 secs behind Kankkunen. Burns, despite the tactics could not quite keep up with his team-mate, but he was still third at the end of the day, 9 secs behind Sainz.

Colin McRae also got the Focus going, taking 4th position, but already almost a minute behind Kankkunen. Gronholm stayed firmly within the top three until a hydraylics pipe was left unfastened in the service, which cost him a 50 second penalty as additional repairs exceeded the service time. He was now 5th, 20 secs behind McRae. Then came Rovanpera and the top privateer Sebastian Lindholm.

The outcome of the rally was by no means decided when the final day started with 6 stages to go. Juha Kankkunen was in the control of the situation and with his experience he stayed in front, but not easily: his lead margin was never more than 13 secs, and at the end the difference was 9.7 seconds. Richard Burns still had great effort on the last day and passed Sainz who couldn't keep up with the Subarus.

The final special stage was televised live according to the new format and like in Corsica, three championship points were awarded to the winner of the TV stage. Also retired works drivers are allowed to participate on the TV stage, which led to some bizarre tactics. Both Radstrom and Auriol who had lost their possibilities to score any points retired prior to the final stage getting a chance to get their cars thoroughly repaired and have a shot at those extra points. The retirees drove the TV stage first and Auriol was fastest, followed by Tommi Makinen. After them the top the runners in the rally drove in reversed order. And, just as the leaders were about to come through, it started raining heavily, which made the road slippery and much slower. Thus, Auriol got three points, Makinen two, and the final extra point went to Toni Gardemeister who showed some impressive lines on the already wet road.

Some drivers criticized that the amount of points from the TV stage is out of proportion as one good stage result can give you as many points as finishing 4th in the whole rally. Perhaps some adjustment should be made, but as an idea the TV stage is excellent. It not only increases the all-important TV presence of the sport but also adds a welcomed flavour to the final day, which too rarely involves any real competition as everyone is just securing their position.

Winners: Juha Kankkunen / Juha Repo (Photo by STI)

Anyway, an important victory for Kankkunen, who is now again leading alone the list of most WRC wins of all time with 23 wins. Second place was a great result for Burns and beating Sainz on the fast Finnish roads must have felt good. Colin McRae has never finished this event and this time it seemed to happen, but on the final stage his engine blew just one kilometre before the finish. The engine had leaked oil already on the previous stage and Colin was trying to nurse it to the finish line. So, Gronholm who had been trying to catch McRae all day finished 4th and the Seats of Rovanpera and Gardemeister were 5th and 6th, respectively. 7th was one of the top drivers in the Finnish championship, Sebastian Lindholm, followed by a young Finnish driver Janne Tuohino, both driving a bit outdated Ford Escort WRC's. Francois Delecour, not showing very good speed apart from a couple of nice stage times was tenth and Freddy Loix 11th after all his troubles.

Group N was won in a dominant fashion by Jouko Puhakka and F2 by the new British Rally Champion Tapio Laukkanen with similarly clear margins. Once again Rally Finland was too tough to be won by anyone else than a Finnish driver, in all classes. Burns and Sainz came close but that's not enough, better luck next year!