With an average speed of 128.2km/h – or 79.6mph – Rally Finland 2026 was the second-fastest event in World Rally Championship history.
While it was actually last year’s Jyväskylä-based event that beat this year’s to first, there were concerns that the route was too fast this year – not featuring virtual chicanes like 2025.
Thierry Neuville led those calls, telling DirtFish during recce that this was likely be the fastest Rally Finland he’d ever done. Perhaps without the heavy rainfall that affected two stages on Friday afternoon, it would’ve been.
After the event, Neuville claimed the stages were too fast and too risky.
“It was too fast, yeah,” he told DirtFish. “ l said it on recce. I said it’s the fastest Rally Finland I have ever seen.
“I never loved very much those super fast rallies, but on the other hand, I enjoy it when everything is working fine. But still, I mean, there were average speeds of 147, 148 in sections. When it’s only straight line, it’s fine, but there was not much straight line. It’s cornering all the way through, blind corners.
“If you get it right, it’s an amazing feeling, especially with those cars, but on the other hand, the risk is always very high that something happens. So… maybe find stages a little bit more narrow and more twisty it could be fine.”
Neuville doesn't enjoy super-fast stages without any technicality
Neuville’s peers didn’t agree with him, however.
When DirtFish put Neuville’s comments to his Hyundai team-mate Adrien Fourmaux, he quipped: “It becomes too fast when you start to be too old.”
Rally winner Sami Pajari didn’t share Neuville’s fears either.
He told DirtFish: “For me, it was not too fast. It’s clearly fast, that’s for sure. Maybe, could we have some more technical stages? Maybe, yes, we could. But anyway, I really enjoyed it out there.
“So, well, let’s say, especially the stage where Séb [Ogier] went off, for me it was Ann absolutely beautiful, beautiful stage and I really enjoyed it. But yeah it’s always where is there the line when is it too fast? So I don’t know.”
Toyota team-mate Takamoto Katsuta felt speed was simply a character of the rally.
He explained: “Last year Finland was also crazy fast. Ouninpohja, Myninpää, we are not driving anymore. I think the only thing last year which sped us down were virtual chicanes and some chicanes in Myninpää also.
“But if you took away basically the same speed and even more last year was quicker. But this is a character of the stages in Finland and Estonia, same in Sweden, so I don’t know.
“For me as long as the car is safe enough and there is not nasty trees or some bad things around, in my opinion, it’s OK.”
M-Sport’s Jon Armstrong admitted he was surprised by the number of mistakes made this year.
Ogier crashed out of the lead, Mãrtiņš Sesks crashed on Saturday and Esapekka Lappi the day before. Armstrong himself got stuck in a ditch while Neuville damaged his front-left suspension.
“You’re not expecting people to make as many mistakes as what we’ve seen this weekend,” Armstrong told DirtFish.
“Actually we’ve seen quite a lot of that this year which is strange – it’s like the the gap and the margins are tightening between everyone because we can all watch Rally TV, we can see where the speed is, so I believe everyone has to take more risks in the places where you don’t want to, the really ballsy places, so that’s why we’re starting to see more mistakes, more accidents.”
Could more new stages reduce the risk and therefore speed cars travel at?
Armstrong suggested the fix for that could be using more fresh stages every year.
He continued: “Yeah, I think it’s definitely a question worth looking into because, yeah, rallying in my eyes growing up… OK, I’m not really old, but I’m still old enough to remember the days where the events were longer.
“There was the chance to have a puncture and still win the rally. Those days are almost gone now, but whenever we have to start taking like massive risks everywhere at the speeds it’s difficult, because yeah we’re going to see more of these crashes.
“But OK that’s also exciting in its own right, but not whenever it’s maybe a little bit too far in terms of what we’re trying to do with the cars.
“But that’s also what we come here to do is try and find the limit and yeah some of us have been finding that this weekend.”
