Back-to-back WRC2 wins and his Rally1 debut looming large on the horizon, it would be easy for Sami Pajari to start getting ahead of himself. Anybody who knows the Finn, knows that’s not going to happen.
On a rally where the sensible money would, perhaps, have been heading in Oliver Solberg’s direction, the 22-year-old Finn was utterly dominant.
What’s pleasing Pajari is the consistency of speed he’s finding from himself and the Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 beneath him. It was the same when he won a very different style of gravel rally in Sardinia earlier this month.
Pajari won eight out of 19 stages in Poland, backing off on the final day to wrap up a comfortable victory
Asked if he felt he’d ever driven better, he smiled his slightly bashful smile and with a brief shake of the head confirmed he’s on top of his game.
Pajari told DirtFish: “I think, yeah, like Sardinia and this one, there was absolutely no mistakes on the rally. So I think the pace is there, but also to do it completely without any mistakes is good.
“And, let’s say, there are not any big changes on the times, like one stage is good, one is bad – all the times are really in the window. And on this rally it was completely flat out from the beginning. Maybe just in the last stage I was able to be careful and calm down a bit, but still, like even the second last stage, I was still pushing quite much not to lose too many seconds there.”
Pajari heads to Latvia chasing a WRC2 hat-trick in a fortnight’s time, but it’s Finland and that Rally1 debut that is working its way towards the front of his mind. As his Polish performance demonstrated, it’s not there yet. There’s still plenty of bandwidth for Pajari to remember the task in hand.
“Personally,” he said, “it’s such a big thing, such a big, nice thing, just in general for me. So, of course, I’m extremely excited about it. But, OK, I knew it already before this rally, and still we managed to do a great result here. So, I think it’s not affecting me so much.
Pajari’s second win in succession moves him to second place in the WRC2 title race, three points adrift of Citroën’s Yohan Rossel.
