"You need big balls and you have to be clever"

A must watch video: Marcus Gronholm driving the legendary Ouninpohja special stage of Rally Finland.

He's going slow but that just gives him the time to recall all of everybody else's accidents.
"Next corner, my cousin went off...ha", "Rovenperä went out there, he said something broke on the car but...I don't know", "Everybody is very very nervous, even me", all priceless lines delivered in classic Finnish deadpan.

The best part for me? They write the names of the drivers on the rocks they hit! That's harsh.


(eurosport)



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Peak Performance

Almost as good as the famous Ari Vatanen "Climb Dance"! Marcus Gronholm in a Ford Fiesta at this year's Pike's Peak.






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15 days 16 hours 6 minutes and 04 seconds

I'm not sure if it took 15 days, 16 hours, 6 minutes and 04 seconds to assemble this Peugeot 307 WRC. Perhaps that included the 35 hour week and a couple of strikes. In any case, eleven days after completion Marcus Gronholm and Timo Rautiainen drove this very car to a win at the 2004 Rally of Finland.

(video: Peugeot Sport)

Tarmac, Gravel and Ice, the FIA WRC 2007 review.

Sebastian Loeb must feel kind of lonely with Marcus Grönholm retiring.   

2007 saw the WRC season, like Formula 1, come down to the last race between the French and Finnish aces.

"Our battle for the driver's championship went down to the final round and the closeness of the competition was typified by Rally New Zealand where my fight with Sébastien Loeb ended with a margin of just 0.3 seconds after three days of flat-out driving," Grönholm said about the 2007 season. "It doesn't get any better than that. "

Indeed.

This clip was shown at the 2007 FIA gala awards.

Muddy Rally

WRC Rally Germany this week end....again no love for us WRC fans here in the US.

Couple of quick clips, in the first Sebastian Loeb discusses driving on the muddy narrow stages and offers pearls of wisdom such as "...you have to have good notes..." "..mud is slippery.." and "...you have to slow down.." OK Seb, we wanted to hear more about you left foot braking technique but, nice to hear from you.

In the second clip Marcus Gronholm tells it like it is, Seb does his usual gallic shrugging and there are some cool shots of BF Goodrich tire techs hand cutting tires...

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Suomi

Adil and our rally car friends over a Holunfie will like this. It's a scandal that there is zero coverage of WRC in the US. Is Pinks really that popular that entire afternoons need to be devoted to it?
Anyway... Rally Finland, Super Special Stage, Markus Gronholm vs Sebastian Loeb, Ford Focus vs Citroen C4. This sure makes the Race of Champions pale in comparison..

Finnish just seems like the perfect language for rally commentary!
enjoy......



and here is another: That last gray Mitsubishi does not sound so good...