There was not so much time after our great rally at Japan to get us on action again. This time we will be at France in Alsace, surface;tarmac. I´m very excited to be on new surface. It is true that this will be my first rally on Tarmac, everyone have their first time...

We´ll this is the toughest place to start tarmac rallies because we need to fight for the S-WRC Championship on same time. At least it is great that we are still on game after those two bad rallies during the season. I don´t take any pressure that this rally is on Tarmac. There are competitors who are more experienced on Tarmac than I am but I just do my best and don´t think anything what other drivers have done or will be doing.

I have quite good base to start tarmac driving. I was in driving school with Rob Wilson at summer. There I got very good basic understanding what are the key points to make a good time on race track on tarmac conditions. I have transferred as much as I can to use this knowledge on this rally also. Pace notes will be one interesting thing at France. I have been doing many years pace notes for gravel and I have my things to make them work very well for me on gravel. Basicly my style of doing pace notes should work well on what ever conditions. That is because I describe the corner angle almost always and when I come to corner with rally car, I decide the speed myself. Cars in front of us will be cutting the corners and bring some gravel on road so I need to be sharp to understand how much that makes difference for car behaouviour.

We are now on our way to do the last test before the rally. Like I said previously I´m very keen to start the rally and learn a new things on rally driving. Even I have been doing it so long time that gravel is very normal thing for me so this gives new motivation also.

Best regards,
Jari