Brendan's Blog - Tommi Makinen Snow School

Brendan's Blog - Tommi Makinen Snow School

Hi Everyone,

We spent the last three days in Finland participating in the Tommi Makinen Snow Rallyschool. What an amazing experience!

We finished the WRC Academy training camp and made our way back to Heathrow, where we then flew to Helsinki in Finland. It was then a 3 hour drive to Jyvaskyla where we spent the night, which is the home town for Rally Finland later in the year. A good night’s sleep was in need before we tackled the snow stages for the first time. The next morning we drove to Tommi’s new workshop. We got to meet the mechanics, our instructor and see the two cars that I would drive. Both cars were 2010 Spec C Subarus.

 

We then made our way out to the forest, which was private property with a purpose built road for the snow school.  Our instructor, Tapio Laukkanen, got us straight to work doing recce of the 4.7 km stage. Recce was quite hard because the road was very narrow, twisty and undulating, with snowbanks up to one metre high. There had been quite nice weather, so the stage only had a light covering of snow, with the base predominantly ice.

 

I jumped in the car with Tapio and did a few runs down the stage in the opposite direction that I recced and then had a drive with him coaching me in that same direction. My initial impression was how unbelievable the grip was from such narrow spiked tyres. If you committed yourself and stayed on the throttle there was almost as much grip as on gravel. There were some patches that were more slippery than others and with the road being so narrow, it was difficult to always keep on line.

Once I was comfortable, it was Rhianon’s turn to get in the car and we went at race speed on our pace notes. The rest of the day we continued to build confidence and learn the art of driving on snow and ice.

Day two’s stage was a lot faster, with less ice but more flowing roads, much like you see on TV for the WRC Rally Finland. There were many corners over crests and some big jumps. The road was also much wider than the previous days stage. I felt more comfortable on this flowing stage but it kept snowing heavily which was making the road very soft and slippery, a real winter experience. We even managed a couple of snowball fights and Tapio and I had some fun by chasing Rhianon and throwing her in the deep soft snow, in her full driving suit!

After lunch we were treated to a very special surprise, when Tommi himself came out to drive the full spec rally car and teach me a few tricks. This experience was incredible and one of the best days of my life. The heavy falling snow stopped, so Tommi had to clean the road for a few runs, using every inch possible and any snow bank that he was able to use as a break or to make it faster at the exit. The road cleaned up quite fast and a gravel base started to come through. It was much easier than the tighter ice road for me because the groove wasn’t so narrow and I was more comfortable with the conditions.

After my experience sitting in with Tommi, Rhianon went for a few quick runs, meaning she now has been in a rally car with two World Rally Champions. From Petter Solberg in Spain last October to Tommi Makinen in the snow.

I then got back in the car to drive for the rest of the afternoon. It was much easier having seen how relaxed Tommi was tackling the stage and adapting what he taught me to my driving skills and getting more out of the car and the road.

It was really amazing being able to experience driving on the snow without the pressure of being in a rally. We have had the most exciting couple of days, all of which are part of an amazing year ahead.

We are now on the road driving back towards Helsinki where we fly out in the morning to make our way to Madrid where we will be doing a two day test in a Fiesta R2, preparing ourselves for Rally Portugal.

Cheers,
Brendo