Back to Earth

The Botniaring race took place only one week after the Knutstorp SSM, so there wasnīt much time to prepare the car for it. Anyway, everything seemed to be ok though. Toughest competition in my class was expected to come from Tapani Laurinen and Kari Erkintalo, who both have pretty fast Mini Coopers.

Free practices and qualifying

Free practices went pretty well and my lap times were about 1 seconds better that in previous year. For the qualifying we got rain, and completely opposite to Sweden, here it was just bad for me. Tapani Laurinen in his Mini Cooper was very fast achieving 4th position in the grid. I was second in our class, but 7th overall.

Race 1

For the Sunday's races the conditions were dry again. The race itself was frankly speaking a bit boring. Tapani Laurinen got a very good start and left few bigger cars between us. For the few laps I tried to approach them with no success and soon decided just to keep my position. So, in the end I was 2nd in class.

Race 2

For this race the conditions were pretty much the same as in the first one. Tapani Laurinen took again the lead in our class and I tried to follow amongst the bigger cars. In the halfway of the first lap, there appeared a problem with my gearbox. I couldnīt engage the 2nd gear at all and the rest of the race I had to use only the 3rd and 4th gear. This caused that also Kari Erkintalo was faster than me, and in the end I was 3rd in class.

Conclusion

2nd and 3rd in class wasnīt so bad, and still helped to keep my 1st position in the series points in my class. However, especially Tapani Laurinen is so fast that the rest of the season will be really interesting. The next race is the Historic Grand Race at Ahvenisto, and on that track anything can happen. Itīs just best to keep head cool there…

Botniaring race results can be found from: http://historicrace.mylaps.com/