Both Robert Virves and Teemu Suninen felt they deserved to win Rally Finland. Both appreciated that the other would have, too.
In the end, the WRC2 battle was largely decided by two important times: a notional, and a penalty.
Prior to SS17, where Sébastien Ogier crashed, Virves had been leading Suninen by 24.7 seconds. But when the notional times were applied following the cancelation of the stage, suddenly Suninen was in the lead by 0.9s.
Virves was the first car onto the scene of Ogier’s accident, but notional times account for that stoppage. So why did he lose so much time?
“At the beginning I had some issue with a sensor in the car,” Virves told DirtFish.
“I don’t know how many kilometres we drove, but the first kilometers I was driving quite slowly and trying to figure out the issue. So once it was fixed, we started to drive and then the stage was red flagged.”
What was the issue?
“It was just one position sensor which basically made the car front-wheel-drive at some places,” Virves revealed.
“I basically just disconnected one sensor [to fix it] and that’s it.”
Suninen’s lead was shortlived however, as on Sunday he was handed a 30-second time penalty for failing to follow the correct procedure when passing Patrick Enok’s accident on SS11.
Suninen explained to DirtFish: “There was a marshal showing the slow down and guiding us to the side of the road, s I was expecting to see the car on the ditch. Then I saw the car, and then I saw a green flash on the GPS tracker. My eyes went to confirm it.
“When I lifted my eyes up, I saw two persons behind the car, and I thought that all is fine. No issues needed because the place seems to be relatively safe.
“Everything happened really fast,” he added, “I saw two persons behind the car so I thought they were drivers, we got OK on GPS. The OK comes only when the driver says OK.
“So I think there was like enough evidence for me to go, but it seems like not. I should have stopped.”
In their verdict, the stewards clarified that even if the GPS suggests the crew is OK, crews must only continue if they see a crew member physically displaying the OK board.
Virves eventually won the event by 16.1s.
