Driving with Kimi – Kaj Lindström; Back to asphalt

After a break of a few weeks work in the rally car continued with a two-day asphalt test. The first test day we drove a week ago on Sunday in Germany and the second one last Friday in France.

It's nice to go do another tarmac rally. Rally Bulgaria already showed us that asphalt is a familiar surface for Kimi. Although, Rally Germany is a peculiar rally in the sense that the character and the grip of the roads is different on each race day. The first day is driven in the middle of the vineyards of the Mosel valley on narrow, bumpy and quite dirty roads. On the second day we go to the area of Nato's military base in Baumholder where the special stages are uneven and in some places very dirty and slippery roads paved with concrete. The rally's longest stage, the 48 km long Panzerplatten SS, will be driven twice on those army base concrete roads. We went there to test last week just because there are no such roads anywhere else in Europe.

The rally ends with style on Sunday with a super special stage (4.37 km) driven in Trier's Porta Nigra. The area is one of UNESCO's world heritage sites. The old buildings there are magnificent.

We got the car into good shape in the tests. Kimi has his own vision of what kind of a car fits his driving style on tarmac and we believe that we have a car like that available during the weekend.

The roads in Rally Germany are so different on each day that we have to make daily changes to the suspension. This rally is a again new experince for Kimi so our goal has not changed: let's drive to the finish line and avoid mistakes.

In Rally Germany we mainly use the PZero one-type tyre designed by Pirelli for asphalt. We also have a limited option of the same tyre with a softer compound in case the weather suddenly gets rainy or cold. In Rally Germany the weather often changes unexpectedly so based on my experience I believe that we'll use both tyre choices in the race.

This rally wasn't driven last year but when compared with 2008 the special stages are almost the same. There's only one new SS on the route and it's driven on Saturday. There's quite a huge amount of SS-kilometers, 407.31 km.

I'll get back to you in a week after we've made our trip to Germany.

Best wishes
Kaitsu

Source: Kolmeks.fi
Courtesy: Dracaena