Their debut run at the mighty Rally Finland is proving more challenging than Kiwi Junior World Rally Championship competitors Dave Holder and Jason Farmer were anticipating. The pair are in a 12-strong JWRC field all driving identical Ford Fiesta R2 EcoBoost cars, and finished Friday’s 128.68 kilometres of competitive action eighth in their class.
Holder says the positives were the consistency and a clean run of Friday’s first full day of action in Finland, but he sums it up as a pretty challenging day.
“We came here expecting to have a bit more speed as we felt this would be more similar to New Zealand roads. They are similar in many respects, but they also have lots of ruts which I’m still struggling with unfortunately.
“A bit of an up and down day, including possibly the worst stage of my life – we almost got stuck on the start line because of some big ruts, then at the finish of the stage, I got confused where the start was and stopped too early…
“So not so good on the stage times today, but we did have a clean day and didn’t make any mistakes from a driving perspective.
“Tomorrow we’ll try and drive with a bit more confidence and hopefully the times to improve. Still two days to go and more learning to be had.”
On Saturday (Finnish time), crews face eight stages over a competitive distance of 142.86km, the longest individual day of the rally, before the rally concludes with four stages on Sunday.
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