Heikkilä: "Home rally always has an atmosphere like no other”

Mikko Heikkilä mounts a challenge on his home soil as the WRC season moves to Finland this weekend. Driving his career-fifth Secto Rally Finland, the upcoming event is the Skoda-driver’s favorite of the calendar. 

Mikko Heikkilä and co-driver Kristian Temonen continue their WRC2 campaign this weekend in the Secto Rally Finland, the ninth round of the World Rally Championship. The Finnish classic is a home event for the TGS Motorsport Skoda driver, who embarks on his career-fifth WRC Finland. The upcoming event is the highlight of the season for Heikkilä.

-Whilst Estonia and Latvia are quite close, Finland is still the best event in the calendar in my opinion. The roads of Jyväskylä are just so enjoyable. They are fast and challenging, and always lined up with loads of spectators, and usually a lot of friends, family, and cooperation partners too. It has an atmosphere like no other rally, Heikkilä exclaims.

The four-day event begins with the short Harju super special on Thursday and concludes with a double run of the legendary Ouninpohja stage on Sunday.

-Interesting to see a new way of scheduling a Sunday, I haven’t heard of anything like it in a while. But Ouninpohja is a long stage, so we still have decent competitive kilometres on Sunday. It’s one of, if not the most, challenging stages of the rally. There is a possibility to make a gap one way or another, and if we are still competing for a position on Sunday it’s a full send both times, and that won’t be an easy push, Heikkilä explains.

After a long record-breaking heat period in Finland, rain is finally on the horizon for the weekend. The conditions might have an impact on the rally, especially in case of heavy showers like last year.

-Last year we had heavy showers on the stages making it a slight gamble. If we have steady rain throughout the day or stage it’ll be easy as the road is just a bit more slippery, but with short, heavy bursts of rain the lack of visibility becomes an issue. We’re hoping those bursts keep a distance to us this year, Heikkilä laughs.

Secto Rally Finland is held between 31^st of July and 3^rd of August in Jyväskylä, Finland. The rally consists of 20 special stages and 307,22 special stage kilometres. The rally is shown live at Rally.tv streaming service.