Rally Finland winner Sami Pajari says this victory is more special than his first in the World Rally Championship, which he claimed two weeks ago in Estonia.
Pajari beat Toyota team-mate Oliver Solberg to second for the second event in succession, establishing a 26.7s winning margin in Finland.
While Estonia was Pajari’s maiden success, claimed via a dominant performance leading the rally from start to finish, winning at home is worth that little bit more to the 24-year-old.
Pajari told DirtFish: “Obviously, it’s great. It’s once again a big relief. In a way, even if it’s the same thing, I dream about winning Rally Finland, so it’s also a WRC win. But in a more specific way, I dream maybe more about winning Rally Finland than winning a WRC event.
“I also discussed before the rally with Esapekka [Lappi], because he also achieved it very soon into his WRC career. So he said it, that it’s almost bigger than winning the world championship, in a way, because for us it’s the thing.
“We’ve lived all our lives just close by and kind of the heritage and the culture of rallying here is so strong, and we have all seen those old videos from the Group B times and so on, Juha [Kankkunen] and Ari [Vatanen], and all these many, many others, but these guys driving there. And in a way, then, one day you are kind of one of them.
“And even more special, like now, just when we crossed the finish line, there was Juha and Ari congratulating me. So it’s really special.”
Pajari saw Vatanen before the powerstage, as well as at the end of it.
“He was feeling really happy for me and for the performance,” Pajari shared. “And he hugged me and I told him I’ll take it easy, it’s one more stage. But he was like, no, no, no, no worries. It’s like, you have already done it. So it’s OK, it will be fine. It was like that.
“So maybe I got relief of the pressure even more because of him, but that was very kind.”
Pajari scored 27 points in Finland to close to 30 behind Elfyn Evans
Pajari took no risks across Super Sunday or the powerstage, securing fifth place (and two bonus points) in both.
“There are some points to take on the powerstage, so you still would like to do an OK time,” he explained. “But it’s clearly tricky to judge always where you are, if you are still on the safe zone, because for sure you cannot just go slow.”
The result moves Pajari to second in the world championship, 30 points behind Elfyn Evans.
