Umeå was a winter wonderland on Wednesday as the World Rally Championship crews completed their Rally Sweden recces.
It’s been snowing for weeks in this part of Sweden, and with the temperature dropping as low as -11° Celsius (12°F) today, and set to stay well below freezing all weekend, conditions seem to be just about perfect for a winter rally.
Or are they?
While there’s plenty of snow, there’s also an apparent lack of solid ice base across the stages.
Snow is everywhere in Umeå, but the gravel beneath isn't all solid
Potentially mirroring last year, the cars will quickly wear through the ice to gravel beneath with their tungsten-tipped studded Pirelli tires. And in some areas, the ice is already gone.
“There’s a lot of gravel,” Toyota’s Elfyn Evans told DirtFish. “I’m not sure how long the roads have been open but there’s not so much ice about the place.”
As is often the case in Sweden, the abrasive gravel is likely to pluck the studs from tires and cause drivers to lose grip as the stages progress. With the further melting of ice on the first pass of the stages, that problem will become particularly noticeable on Friday and Saturday afternoons.
Or, as Thierry Neuville bluntly put it: “On the second pass, we are all going to struggle.”
Hyundai’s championship-leading driver will be first on the road as the rally gets underway on Friday. With the snow still falling, Neuville may be forced to play snow sweeper, clearing a line in the loose powder. It’s a standard problem for any modern-day Monte Carlo Rally winner – but there’s such an abundance of snow in Umeå that the WRC points leader thinks that even those starting right behind him will drop time on the slippery surface.
Monte winner Thierry Neuville knows he has a tough rally ahead of him
He told DirtFish: “I suspect Elfyn [Evans] and Ott [Tänak] won’t be much happier than I will be.”
The event organizers can send in a snowplow – a real one, not the #11 Hyundai i20 N Rally1 – through the stage before the rally begins to clear away the fresh snow. It’s a strategy Neuville is in favor of.
“I think there’s still a chance that a snowplow will go through,” he said. “That will create a bit more equal conditions, at least for the first pass, that will be mandatory.”
Also in the pro-plow camp is defending Sweden winner Tänak, who firmly stated: “I’m pretty sure they’ll plow the roads, I don’t see any reason not to.”
Fresh snow on the stages could play in to the hand of drivers starting down the road order on Friday - like Kalle Rovanperä
But on the other side of the Hyundai garage, and of the snowplow debate, is Esapekka Lappi. He’ll start the first full day of Rally Sweden action from eighth on the road and if conditions remain the same, will get the benefit of a perfectly swept road on which to make a flying return to WRC.
“If it’s not plowed too much that would be a very big advantage on Friday,” he confirmed during the recce. “So let’s hope it stays as it is. I will not push [for it to be plowed] at all, I will stay silent.”
So, to plow or not to plow? That is the question for the Rally Sweden organizers.
