Overall victory at the Arctic Lapland Rally went, as expected, to WRC star Elfyn Evans, who was in Rovaniemi testing Toyota’s Rally1 car ahead of Rally Sweden. However, the winners of the Finnish championship classes were Lappi and co-driver Mälkönen, who claimed the iconic top prizes of the event – the reindeer antlers.
Lappi already had a set of antlers from the 2012 edition of the Arctic Rally, but Mälkönen now got to handle the coveted trophy for the first time. Ahead of the weekend, Lappi had promised that this time they would secure Mälkönen her first antlers north of the Arctic Circle.
“It’s a really cool thing. I’m especially happy for Enni. She didn’t have the antlers before, and now she does. It was certainly one of her main goals for this season. Let’s see what other goals we can still manage to achieve,” Lappi said after the rally.
Mälkönen first competed at the Arctic Lapland Rally back in 2014.
“The tenth time’s the charm. We’ve come here to try for these quite a few times already. So the feeling is really good,” Mälkönen said with a smile.
Lappi and Mälkönen are competing in selected World Rally Championship events this year in Hyundai’s Rally1 car. But success at the Arctic Lapland Rally was a particularly big moment for Mälkönen.
“Winning the Arctic Lapland Rally was probably the very first dream I had when I started 14 years ago. Sometimes things take a bit longer than you expect, but now the antlers finally came,” Mälkönen rejoiced.
She already had a place in mind for the trophy.
“Well, I’m going to put these next to my bed,” Mälkönen laughed.
The victory celebrations for Lappi and Mälkönen were short-lived, as they climbed into Hyundai’s Rally1 car for testing duties already on Sunday. A week later, they will travel to Sweden, where they will compete for WRC points in the colours of Hyundai’s factory team.
