Report on the 1999 Finnish WRC rally

August the 20th / Day 1

Welcome to our report on the 1999 Finnish rally. The purpose of these few pages is to attempt to give you an overview of what a World Rally Championship rally is all about, from a spectator's point of view, and hopefully allow you to feel as if you had been there yourself. You may skip the comments and go directly to the pictures page by clicking here if you wish. All the pictures were shot on a Minolta Dynax 9 equipped with the VC-9 grip and either a 80-200mm F2.8 or a 28-70mm F2.8 Minolta G zoom or a 85mm F1.4 Minolta G fixed lens. I used Fuji Superia 100 ASA  negative film and Fuji Velvia 50 ASA reversible film. A similar report on the 2000 Acropolis rally is also available accompanied by more than 150 pictures.

We planned our trip to the Finnish event five months before it was to take place, in August 1999, and that's exactly what you have to do if you wish to assist to any WRC event. Hotel rooms and accommodation are hard or even impossible to find if you plan too late. During the months that preceded the event we carefully went through the rally's course and special stage plans in order to select the ones we'd like to see. The event was composed of 23 special stages and you can easily imagine it is impossible to see them all. Playing it safe we selected 5 of the special stages, namely SS3 Mökkiperä, SS6 Laukkaa, SS14 Ouninpohja, SS20 Tammimäki I and SS22 Tammimaki II which we wished to view and shoot the pictures you'll find in the next pages. Like all WRC events the Finnish one complies to the FIA wish that all events start from the same location, in this case Jyväskylä, each one of the three days of competition.

We arrived at Jyväskylä on August the18th. We took the opportunity of being 2 days early and went out to check SS1 and 2  which we had chosen not to see during the competition. The special stages were, of course, not closed at that time and we gladly run through them only to be impressed by the huge jumps they were holding and the quality of the Finnish gravel. As you can see on the event's pictures Finnish gravel is very fine and sometimes as fine as sand. It holds no big rocks or holes that destroy WRC cars in events such as the Acropolis. No wonder the speeds the cars reach on these roads are among the highest of the whole championship (we did not, however, took the risk to exceed 120km/h in our rented Lancer 1.3lt but even at that speed one feels the sheer pleasure of driving on the Finnish gravel roads).

On August the 20th, the first competitive day, the day's 7 special stages were run to the east/north east of Jyväskylä within a radius of 90 km from the base city. The day was dry with some clouds covering the sky. We were on location in SS3, Mökkipërä, between 6.7 and 8.7 km from the start of this 13.39km special stage 2 and a half hours before the first WRC car was to start, enough time to inspect the stage and find a good spot to shoot from. At this location we shot the following pictures:

Special Stage 3

Special stage 3 was won by Richard Burns with a time of   6:36.3 (avg. speed 121.6 km/h), 3.8 sec in front of Markus Grönholm. Juha Kankkunen was third 0.2 sec behind Markus and Didier Auriol fourth 0.4 sec behind Juha. Note the Richard's time on this stage beats last year's best time which was set by Colin McRae at 6:52.7

We then moved to special stage 6, Laukaa, 12.36km long where we arrived 2 hours before the first car was to start the stage. We were located between 2.2 and 3.8 km after the stage's start point. The following pictures were shot at this location:

Special Stage 6

Special stage 6 was won by Markus Grönholm with a time of 6:19.7 (avg. speed 117.2 km/h). Markus was 1.9 seconds faster than Juha Kankkunen. Richard Burns signed the exact same time as Juha. Carlos Sainz and Harri Rovanperä were both 0.7 seconds behind Juha and Richard.

Overall, after day 1 the top 10 drivers were:

1 Grönholm Peugeot 206 42:01,5
2 Kankkunen Subaru Impreza 42:05,3
3 Burns Subaru Impreza 42:07,5
4 Rädstrom Ford Focus 42:11,1
5 Sainz Toyota Corolla 42:15,1
6 Makinen Mitsubishi Lancer 42:19,8
7 Auriol Toyota Corolla 42:24,9
8 Rovanperä Seat Cordoba 42:25,0
9 McRae Ford Focus 42:34,6
10 Martin Toyota Corolla 43:03,5

An excellent performance by Grönholm and an impressive drive from both Kankkunen and Burns. One really feels the speed difference between these ten drivers and the rest of the crew even when standing at the border of the special stage.

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