The Finnish duo has driven the Printsport Racing Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 to victory in the last two rounds and has elevated themselves into the championship battle. Good results are expected from Latvia as well.
The Latvian round is a new addition to the WRC series, but many are familiar with the event from the European Championship level. When talking about the Baltic region and rallying, two things usually come to the fore: fast roads and enthusiastic crowds.
Pajari has experience from the Latvian event three years ago, and some of the same stages are included in this competition.
“I was in Liepaja in the 2021 season driving in the ERC round, and it was warm weather then too. From memory, about half of the route is somewhat familiar, either the same direction or reversed. It’s fast, varied, with wide and narrow sections, but overall, it’s very quick. There are perhaps more rhythm changes than in many other rallies, and a lot of loose gravel, but that probably won’t affect us much with our starting number,” Pajari describes.
“This is quite a similar race to Poland. Here, a special feature is that some stages are driven only once, or only partially twice. Harder surfaces are driven twice and those that hold up less well only once. So, there shouldn’t be any extremely broken sections, but surely some ruts here and there.”
With the victory in the Polish round, Pajari’s crew is certainly one of the top contenders for the win on the fast Latvian roads in the WRC2 class. In the WRC2, drivers can choose seven competitions to accumulate series points, with the six best results counting towards the final points.
Pajari’s crew will start their fifth points competition of the season in Latvia. The WRC2 leader, Citroën’s Yohan Rossel, is not participating in Latvia, and the fourth-placed teammate Nikolay Gryazin will not collect points from Latvia, even though he is competing.
Pajari’s crew is second in the series standings, just three points behind Rossel’s lead, so the weekend offers a chance to take the series lead. The Skoda driver Oliver Solberg, who is third in the standings, also has a chance to take the lead, being seven points behind Pajari.
Originally, Pajari’s crew was supposed to attack the Latvian gravel roads with Toyota’s Rally1 equipment, but the debut with the top-class equipment will actually take place at the turn of August in the Finnish WRC rally. The first tests with the equipment have been completed, but according to the driver, adapting back to the Rally2 equipment was not difficult.
“It was a cool experience to get to drive the Rally1 car, and it’s an amazing machine. It feels like everything is driven a bit faster, but there are many differences between the cars,” Pajari sums up.
“We drove with our own Rally2 car for Latvia for a couple of days, and it easily came back to hand, it’s a really fast car too. If I had to try to drive flat out in some low-powered historic car, maybe that would start to feel slow,” Pajari laughs.
