It’s starting to be a tough battle for the FIA World Rally Championship‘s WRC2 title now as Mads Ostberg is behind leader Andreas Mikkelsen with 30 points, but with two rounds left in the series with Rally Finland running this weekend for Ostberg and with Mikkelsen missing the rally so this round will be a good chance for the Norwegian to catch up in the championship fight.
Mikkelsen will also miss next month’s RACC Rally De Espania, which will then be Ostberg´s last event of the season, but Mikkelsen will start in the WRC final which will be held at Monza in Italy.
Another driver who is in the fight for the title but is further back in the standing is local star Jari Huttunen who drives a Hyundai i20 N Rally2, the reigning WRC3 champion has had a difficult season so far filled with lots of bad luck. During a test he did with the Hyundai Motorsport N team before the start of the home rally, he went off the road but he remained unharmed, however, not the car.
But a few days ago it was confirmed that the Finn will start in the class, the car will be repaired by the Finnish team Printsport in time for the competition and will be joined by team-mate Oliver Solberg in the class.
Another Finnish driver who drives at home is Teemu Suninen in the same Volkswagen Polo GTI R5 that Esapekka Lappi has won in the Arctic Lapland Rally and Rally Portugal earlier this year.
The Finn has also had a pretty tough season, he has competed in the WRC2 class for most of the season and is 85 points behind Mikkelsen. He started the season for M-Sport with which he terminated his contract a few months ago and the next rally he will compete for Hyundai.
Suninen will get Nikolay Gryazin as team-mate for the rally, the Russian who returns to the series will help Movisport SRL to score points in the Team Championship where they chase the leader Toksport WRT.
For M-Sport Ford, it will be Martin Prokop and the Swede Tom Kristensson, who will end the season after the rally and rounding up the entries as the only sole driver in the class is the Estonian Georg Linnamäe who drives a third Volkswagen.
