At some point in your life, you’ll be presented with an opportunity you just have to say yes to. This was mine.
I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t nervous, a touch intimidated or perhaps even a bit scared. But what would you have done in my position?
Matias Henkola has become a good friend of DirtFish’s over the years, working with us through his company Secto during several editions of Rally Finland now – going as far as wrapping his bespoke Audi S1 Quattro in DirtFish colors this August.
Colin Clark swallowed some brave pills and went for a ride with Matias around the Harju stage, but Matias had a bigger plan. He wanted to put one of us in his car for a full event, and my chips cashed in.
I was to be his actual co-driver at Poland Rally Legend.
I’m nothing but self aware. I know I’m not what you would describe as the perfect candidate.
Except, actually, I was. Matias wasn’t interested in having the perfect co-driver alongside him, rather sharing his bonkers creation with the world and helping to illustrate just how demanding competition can be.
Would he live to regret his decision? Maybe just as pertinently, would I?
Matias and I were a first-time partnership
Before we dive deeper into one of the most memorable weekends of my existence though, let’s first learn more about what exactly I was getting myself in for. Because the more you learn, the more ridiculous it gets.
900bhp and 1100Nm of torque provides propulsion akin to being fired out of a canon, and produces a noise that can be heard from 14km away at over 120dB.
The crew can experience forces up to 3G, alternating between 1.5G acceleration and 1.5G deceleration.
And your jaw will drop to the floor the first time you see, or hear, the car, I promise.
“The mission that we had was something that looked like the old days, sounded like the old days but then at the same time would be driveable like a modern car,” Matias explained.
“The kick I get from this project is it’s a custom build by my friends and a small group of professionals, so that’s really important for me. I don’t think you can buy anything that’s as spectacular as what we have built.”
Taking a peak inside, it’s clear this isn’t a standard Quattro in any regard. Gone are all the old buttons and switches and in their place a minimalist dashboard with a steering wheel borrowed from Hyundai’s i20 N Rally1, and a fully electronic display showing a whole load of numbers I’m not going to pretend to understand.
Keeping the car glued to the road this particular weekend was Hankook’s Dynapro R213W WRC71 (the soft tire to you and me) – precisely the same specification of tire equipped to today’s WRC cars. Pretty cool.
Matias smiled: “It’s super hard to drive. You have all the power so you need to know what you’re doing, and when you have this power it can be laggy so you have to anticipate beforehand what you do.
“The car doesn’t like to go slow, so basically it’s second gear and up that you can really stretch its legs. It’s also really, really physical.
“I’m on a mission to revive rallying and a big part of that is to get the positives back, and have cars that sound special and give feeling,” Matias added.
“What you can see just from the fans looking at the car, they love it. They truly love it. It’s amazing the amount of people coming up and showing interest. That’s what this is all about.”
Let it be said that I was a very lucky man getting to experience this all firsthand, but first we had to learn the stages on which my perspective of speed would be transformed.
Recce was going to be a major test for both of us. Matias had never driven to English pacenotes before, while although I had co-driven thrice before (twice around race circuits and once in the forests), all three cars I’d strapped myself into had half the power combined of the Audi, and I’d never, ever written my own pacenotes on recce either.
Should be a breeze, right?
It might’ve been had I been better prepared. I could make all the excuses under the sun as to why I wasn’t, but I don’t want to lose your interest. The bottom line is more studying before I left for Poland would’ve eliminated some fairly embarrassing errors – chiefly being fully on top of stage design in the road book.
This was all part of what I wanted to take from the experience, though. I’m fortunate enough to have some contacts I could have leaned on for proper professional tips, but I felt that would be cheating. This was an opportunity to go in raw and discover how demanding the job truly is.
Have I convinced you, or just myself, with that?
My pacenotes - I know they're not perfect, so go easy on me in the comments!
Matias wasn’t worried, most importantly. He knew what he’d signed up for, although I never plucked up the courage to quiz him on just how low he thought the bar would be.
I didn’t have time, because with some notes scribbled down, we were due in the center of Polanica-Zdrój for the ceremonial start. I’m told I’m a pessimist; I prefer to set my expectations low so that I can only be positively surprised by the outcome.
Even the world’s biggest optimist would’ve been blown away by this.
As soon as we trundled out of service, the fever ramped up. Local legend, and triple European Rally champion, Kajetan Kajetanowicz was the car ahead of us, and fans were flocking the sidewalk, and even the road itself, to get as close as they could to Kajto and the Citroën C3 WRC he was renting for the occasion.
It was bonkers to witness.
Finally escaping the flock of fans, Kajto dropped the clutch and launched the Citroën down the road before quickly slamming on the brakes to obey the rules of the road. I sensed this lit a lightbulb in the head of my driver.
“This we can do,” he grinned.
It was time to tighten the belts. Not standard practice for a transit section, but there’s nothing standard about the fury of 900bhp. This was the moment I’d been anticipating this entire time. My first launch.
My smile widened nearly as quickly as the car shot off. I believe the actual phrase I uttered at this moment can’t really be repeated in writing, but you get the idea.
This sort of acceleration is impossible to describe. It can only really be felt to be properly understood. But what I can tell you is I’ve never, ever had a bigger spike of adrenaline than in that moment.
Simultaneously, I was now even more excited and even more nervous about what lay ahead of me. I’ve sat in Rally1 cars with Thierry Neuville and Sébastien Ogier before; they’re child’s play off the line compared to Matias Henkola and his Audi.
Suitably buzzed up, we parked up for the start where it’s clear we’ll be here for a while. People are everywhere. As soon as we’re stopped, Matias is swarmed by requests for autographs, selfies and photographs. I even get a couple of requests. The interest in this car is off the charts.
At this point I should thank the organizing team for all their efforts to get us there and for making us feel so welcome. Michal Majewski in particular: any request, large or small, he had an answer and/or a solution. This was going to be a mesmerising weekend.
Time flew by as I began to chew the fat with friends old and new. Catching up with Louis Louka was a highlight; the Belgian starting his 200th rally on the weekend alongside Bruno Thiry – the driver he idolized as a youngster. Proper.
“It’s not hard to tell which car is yours,” he smiled, referencing the DirtFish livery. But then he saw what the livery covered.
“Wow,” he exclaimed. “It’s like a Rally1 car, what is this?”
Apologies for the dreadful screenshot, but the ceremonial start atmosphere was electric
These are pinch-me moments. I like to think I’ve worked hard in life to get myself to where I am, but it’s super important to take a step back and truly appreciate what’s happening around you. I can, and should, do better in that regard, but I really felt that on Thursday evening.
Then it was time to go over the ramp. It’s quite a strange moment being the one getting out of the car and waving to the crowd, rather than the one capturing or watching others do so. Quick interview done, we were back in the car and on route to serivce – but not before somehow making our way through the chaos ahead.
Flares aplenty, flags draping across the windshield, excited fans banging on the roof as we crept our way through the crowd, it was utterly insane. And intoxicating. Time for launch number two and I couldn’t contain my laugh. What a silly, yet brilliant, car.
I didn’t sleep much that night. I’m not a breakfast person, but I physically couldn’t eat the next morning either. I tried, but the food wouldn’t leave my fork. I just needed to get going. The waiting around was doing me no good. I’ve not felt nerves like it for a good while.
Sitting down in the lobby, waiting for Matias, I meet Bruno Thiry for the first time. Cool – but it’s the conversation with Mr Louka that struck the real chord.
“Are you ready for it?” he asked.
“No!” I laughed. “Once I get going I’m sure I’ll be fine, but I don’t like the waiting or not knowing what I’m in for.”
“All the tasks on their own are not so hard,” Louis advised. “It’s trying to do them all together that’s the challenge.”
I had no reason to doubt a man who’s won stages in the world championship, but in an hours’ time I would soon see if I agreed with his analysis.
Soon it would be time to head into the stages
Off we went to service and with half an hour to go, it’s time to lock in and get ready for the onslaught, so I go to the service van and get suited up. I bought this race suit 15kg ago, so fitting in it wasn’t graceful, but mercifully I just about squeezed in. However let’s just say I’m in the Jon Armstrong camp of frequent sweaters. Fireproofs + 80F + one nervous boy = sweat.
“You’re nervous before you’ve even got in the car,” laughed Christian, whose Valtonen Motorsport outfit built, and looks after, this weapon.
“That’s good, that means you feel something,” Matias offered.
Waiting to check into the time control, I have a job to do but all I can think about is the rumble of the car. All I can see are the phone cameras appearing and snapping pictures of this untamed beast.
Conversation is limited as we make our way to the first stage. I don’t know what to say. I just want, maybe even need at this point, to get off the mark and into that first stage.
The sight of other parked rally cars signals we have reached the arrival control. As cool as you like, Matias clambers out: “How long have I got?”
“Five minutes.”
Co-drivers, tell me: where does everything go?
I choose to stay in the car – my process of getting in, out and belted in isn’t the slickest, so it wasn’t worth the risk. And this is where I start to truly appreciate the gravity of Louis’ words.
“All the tasks on their own are not so hard. It’s trying to do them all together that’s the challenge.”
Co-drivers, tell me: where does everything go? I had a co-drivers’ bag and a generously sized door pocket to place things, but trying to stay on top of it was proving difficult for a man of my (limited) organizational skills. I dropped my pen (which thankfully wasn’t essential), but while switching my road book for the pacenote book I lost the timecard.
That was very much essential. Matias, if you’re reading this I don’t know if I admitted this to you, but I didn’t want to create unnecessary stress! Faced with this disaster though, I had no choice: I had to get out the car.
This did the trick. The card had slipped down the side of the seat in between it and the roll cage. Retrieved and with my backside lowered back in, Matias suddenly clambers back in.
Aahh! He’s ready – I’m not.
Arms flailing, I somehow get my belts done, helmet on, HANS device clipped and cameras turned on, only in the nick of time. Smooth, this certainly was not. Remember what I told you before about how much I sweat? Yeah…
Anyway, this was it. I offer Matias a fist bump, there’s 15 seconds to go. 10… 5… 3, 2, 1…
Proof I actually had my head down, reading notes!
I’m pretty sure there wasn’t an earthquake anywhere across the globe at that next second, but in my world there was. I’m shoved into the seat as Matias’ right foot unleashdes the Audi’s full fury. But I’ve got to concentrate, there’s only 30 meters until the first corner…
To be truthful, I don’t remember a whole lot about that first stage. Much like when you’re driving, you slip into a zone and just get on with the job in-hand. In effect, it’s a fight or flight response. If you don’t concentrate, well…
Timing was my biggest fear about accepting this co-driving challenge. A few weeks earlier I’d been fortunate enough to get a surprise run with Nicky Grist reading him notes at Eifel Rallye Festival, and calling the notes at the correct time, and pace, was my biggest weakness then. And this car was a lot faster than Nicky’s Celica.
I don’t know how well I did this time. Trying to hear myself speak, even when fully connected up to the car’s intercom system, was all-but impossible, such was the raucous nature of this ride. And I later learned that Matias couldn’t hear me at all. There’s a chance my last-minute panic may have been a contributing factor there, but you never know. Maybe a raccoon came and disconnected it or something…
In just over three minutes, the adrenalin hit is over. I scramble for the time card, take a deep breath and relieve myself by taking my helmet off – the heat inside the car was high!
Conversation is again muted on the way back, as once more I just don’t know what to say. Everything happened far faster than my brain could compute.
Stage two, a repeat of one, wasn’t for another two and a half hours, so there was time to reflect and make sense of it. But to be honest, that wasn’t what I needed. We were back to waiting, and waiting leads to overthinking, and overthinking leads to nerves. I was looking forward to Saturday’s schedule where things were far more rhythmic.
Sadly I wouldn’t get there, but we’ll get to that.
It transpired that Matias had forgotten to turn on the anti-lag for stage one, so everything I’d been through was about to be multiplied again for the second pass. I wasn’t sure if I should be excited or terrified by that development.
There were rumors we went quickest through the 5km stage, I’m not sure how accurate they were, but I can tell you we were on it. I didn’t lose my place in the notes, Matias drove like a dream and kept the car sliding to thrill the pumped-up fans who were everywhere every time I looked up.
But then…
Approaching the second-to-last corner, suddenly there’s this horrible clattering sound, and drive is lost. We coast through the flying finish boards; me performing by now the routine scramble for the timecard, and Matias trying to diagnose the problem. We stop at the stop control, but we don’t leave. We can’t.
“I can’t get it into first,” Matias says.
The stage went so well, until...
We beg the marshals to give us push, and soon I’m out of the car with them, trying to coax the Audi into life. She refuses. Helmets off, phone call placed to the team, all we can do is wait. Time to sit in the shade and reflect on my first mechanical failure in rallying.
Robert, one of Matias’ longest-standing and best friends, soon arrives along with Mikael, an expert in electronics. The Audi is hooked up to the van and we are towed back to service – itself quite a cool, if unfortunate, experience.
The car, we hope, is fixed for the third and final stage of the day – a blast around the town of Kłodzko. But as soon as we hit the road section, the clattering sound is, if anything, worse. I suspect we aren’t going to start this stage, but I keep those suspicions to myself as Matias calls the team to work out a solution.
Eventually we meet the team in town, and Christian quickly displaces Matias in the drivers’ seat to experience the problem for himself. “It seems that the front diff is broken,” he tells me.
It looks like our day is done. The team head back to service to see if they can source the parts to fix the car anyway, while we sit and contemplate what might have been.
But then Matias spotted something.
“How many cars are still waiting?” he asked me. “Can you do the calculation?”
We worked out that, with the team 20 minutes away, we might still have a shot. Adrenalin and excitement immediately takes over as I sprint up to the time control to see if we’d be allowed to start.
The team arrived and worked their magic, getting the car going so we could start the stage
Thank goodness for modern technology. Without Google translate’s talk to text feature, I’d have been in big trouble. With it, we were in business. I run back to tell Matias the good news, and soon the team arrive. A crowd begins to swarm as three experts do all they can to get this animal back to full working order.
Matias and I look on in awe; my driver admitting he was welling up at the sight of his friends coming together to pull this off. And they did! Suited up, we get into the car and join the queue to start the stage, both completely buzzing by what felt like a miracle.
The light has completely faded, and ahead of us we can see the fireworks in the sky at the first 360 roundabout of the stage. This is what we came here for.
Off the line, let’s do this. But we wouldn’t be doing it for long.
Around a minute later, the car loses drive again and we accept that this time, there would be no lifeline. “At least we tried,” we agreed.
Luckily, where we slowed was near the stage split. So instead of following the correct route, we dived off to the left and coasted to the finish. The car was healthy enough that we could drive back to service at a reduced pace, where fate would decide the rest.
It turned out to be a special evening. Rallying at night just makes everything that bit more exciting, and a proper rallying tale was about to unfold. As I tucked into a pepperoni pizza, washed down by Red Bull Zero (possibly not the smartest move at 11pm), the guys are hard at work formulating a plan.
Our service park neighbors inform us that there is a gearbox waiting for us if we need in Kraków, but Kraków is 300km and three and a half hours away. And it’s already approaching midnight.
Would we be able to return to action tomorrow?
But what do you do in rallying but try? So Mikael and Secto Autmotive’s event manager Sami Heiskanen board the hire car and set off for a seven-hour round trip, hoping to save our rally. I meanwhile get chatting to Sami’s 17-year-old son Eddie and learn about his first event on the horizon, as well as his school friend Rufus who’s a boat racer.
“You have the perfect story now,” Rufus nudged me. He was right. This was one narrative I didn’t need to work.
In the small hours of the morning, we make it back to the hotel. I lay my head to rest, unsure if I’ll be rallying tomorrow or not. All I can feel is the aggression of the five cylinder engine reverberating through my system, or maybe that was just the Red Bull?
I eventually fall asleep, but only for a few hours. I wake up and check my phone, just in case there are any updates. Two minutes earlier, there had been. It’s as if I knew.
“Game over.”
It’s hard to know what to do, or how to feel, in this moment. Your entire plan for the day is erased in an instant. It’s gutting. All that effort, and no reward.
But what an effort. If there’s one thing I’ve taken from this experience is that this team is incredible, and there are thousands of others like this across the world of rallying. It was a real privilege to be allowed and accepted into the inside of one to truly live those emotions, rather than reporting the drama from the outside.
I headed down for some breakfast and decided to walk to the service park, just to offer my commiserations to the guys. But do you know the first thing both Robert and Christian said to me? Sorry.
Don’t be sorry to me – it’s not my car nor my money. I’m just grateful to be here in the first place.
I spent Saturday around the car as much as possible, not wanting to leave it behind!
They then explained what exactly had happened. A front driveshaft let go leaving us in rear-wheel-drive for that last stage, but the gearbox damage was the killer. One part was missing from the replacement box – which, typically, the team had back in Finland – and that was enough to rule us out for the day.
I now fully understand the true meaning behind the phrase ‘that’s rallying’. It’s this complete contrast in emotions between a broken heart and acceptance there’s nothing you can do, mixed with a heart full of joy that you’re able to experience these crazy feelings, and feel part of something special.
I can’t thank Matias and all of his team enough for the opportunity and experience they gave me. You all made me feel so included. My Finnish is restricted to “Rally English” as we joked, but they all did their best to always keep me involved, provided me with team kit and never once made me feel like the imposter I most definitely was.
My overriding feeling is one of unfinished business. This is a story that’s only half complete. So Matias, if you present me with the opportunity again, you know I’ll say yes.
