Sami Pajari and his co-driver Enni Mälkönen encountered difficulties in the WRC Rally Portugal as early as the opening spectator special stage on Thursday: hitting a concrete barrier on the stage took away hopes of a good result. The resulting damage affected the duo’s rankings throughout Friday, and it was not until Saturday’s special stages that they returned to the normal pace, after which they began to consistently set the fastest times.
The rally started on Thursday evening at sunset with a spectator special stage lined with low concrete barriers. While circling around one of the donut’s on the stage, Pajari hit the low obstacle with the right front corner.
“You can’t easily see the lower barriers from the car, and I thought we were in a safe spot. However, the car hit the barrier, and we went on two wheels,” Pajari mused at the end of the opening stage.
After Thursday, the competitors had only a short transition to Parc Fermé, where no service could be performed on the cars. The next service wouldn’t be until Friday evening. Therefore, at this point, the Printsport Racing mechanics were forced to only watch and wait for the car to return back home from the stages.
On Friday morning, the Pajari and Mälkönen began a frantic repair on the road section to the first stage, using the tools and parts found in the car. The right front wheel support was fixed as best as possible, but this resulted in a 6-minute delay from the start of Friday’s first stage, giving the crew a 60-second time penalty.
During the eight special stages on Friday, the only service allowed was to change tires between the two loops of the day. Here, Pajari and Mälkönen had to do some more repairs, and a 10-minute delay in leaving the service area resulted in an additional 100 seconds of time penalties. The times on Friday were reasonable even with a bit of a crippled car, but even on top of that the Arganil 2 stage, the second last of the day, still offered a tire puncture and nearly a 2-minute time loss to the leader.
On Saturday, the Finnish pair’s Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 was in full form thanks to Printsport Racing’s good care, and the duo now set the fastest time right away on the first special stage. The driving was impressive at a leading pace throughout the morning, until the day’s fourth special stage again brought significant time losses due to a tire puncture. After the midday service, the gas was put to the floor again, resulting in three consecutive fastest times. The day’s last two special stages also went very close to the leaders, so Saturday’s speed was overall excellent.
On Sunday, they headed to the four special stages again in excellent driving form. Two more fastest times were added right in the morning, and their position in the class overall standings was 8th, up from 22nd at its lowest on Friday. The legendary Fafe special stage was partly covered in fog in the morning, and so Pajari was already looking forward to driving it again in the afternoon.
“It wasn’t anywhere near perfect. There was a lot of fog, so I drove quite cautiously at places. I could have approached the jump more boldly, but it leaves something to improve for the afternoon,” the driver pondered.
Yet one more twist fit into the event. Just as the finish of the second-to-last special stage was in sight, the car got stuck in a soft roadside bank, and the competition ended there for them. Despite the good effort, the biggest reward this time was six impressive fastest times in the WRC2 class. This meant they were given the FORUM8 WRC2 Most Stage Wins Award during the podium ceremonies.
“There’s quite a lot of events packed into one competition. I believe, however, that we got excellent proof of the car’s potential on gravel. Next, we strike in just over a couple of weeks in Sardinia.”