I would never claim that the rally in Japan is easy but in the end it wasn't the world's toughest either. The route was challenging and the roads were really narrow at times. It was cool to run it.We just went off the road. My blunder, can't help it. It happened during the last note, I got it a bit wrong and it was immediately sayonara. We came a bit too fast to the corner and I couldn't get it back on the road and so we fell quietly into the bushes.
Because there wasn't a soul in the landscape we couldn't get out of there, just me and Kaitsu.
It was the second retirement this season and I didn't get all the kilometers under my belt. Of course it bugs me and it bugs because I could have taken that corner more easily. It just hurts everytime in rally when you make a small mistake. On F1-tracks you are always forgiven more.
The starting position was tricky because we went straight on gravel after Rally Germany. We had no testing so it had some affect when we first took care of the super special stage in the stadium and went after that to run on the dirt roads in the forest.
Technical problems in the beginning are annoying. The machines just refused to gallop so we couldn't really get anywhere when the car didn't work like it should have worked. After we found the right setups it started to show in the stagetimes too.
We just didn't make it to the finish line. What was important was that we drove until the last day and collected again some experience from a different rally. When you are in this game you just have to get used to the fact that everything can happen. It's after all the number 1 -thing in this learning year.
The next rally is in France then. Others haven't drove there either and because it's a tarmac rally it's of course a more familiar surface to me than these Sapporo's forest paths are. It's good to get some testing at this point so that we get a better feeling of the rally.
It will be my 4th rally on tarmac with a WRC-car. I have the same goals.
The most important thing is to finish the rally and avoid the bigger blunders.
Source: KimiRaikkonen.com
Courtesy: Nicole
