The two previous rallies in the World Rally Championship ended with Pajari’s class victory, but this time both Oliver Solberg and compatriot Mikko Heikkilä slipped ahead. Third place was still a commendable performance.
“I already told others that this year must have gone too well if third place is disappointing. It was still a challenging race. I couldn’t get into the kind of flow state that I’ve had in the last couple of rallies, Pajari said to RallyJournal.com.
“It was really challenging. This rally wasn’t supposed to be particularly difficult. We need to analyse a bit and think about what we can do better.”
Pajari already lost ten seconds to Solberg on Thursday’s long Bikernieki special stage. By the end of Friday, the gap was almost 40 seconds, which it eventually was at the finish line as well.
“It may be that we went wrong in the tests. On Friday, we practically lost this rally when we fell too far behind. On Saturday, we were already the fastest in the WRC2 class. On Thursday evening, we had the wrong tyre choice for the long tarmac section, which cost us a lot of time. These are small things, but the differences accumulate,” Pajari summarised.
In the WRC2 class standings, Solberg and Pajari are almost level. Both retired in Portugal and both have two wins. Solberg leads his Finnish colleague by three points.
“It’s the fourth podium in points races for me, and if we include all the races, it’s the fifth podium in the World Rally Championship this year. The season has gone very well. We have to be satisfied with that,” Pajari concluded.
The Finnish promise is facing the biggest rally of his career in less than two weeks. In the Rally Finland in Jyväskylä, Pajari will compete for the first time with a Rally1 hybrid car.
“We’ll take it easy for a couple of days and then start turning our attention towards Jyväskylä. I’ve tried not to think about it and focused fully on this race first. Now I’m starting to look forward to it in a whole different way,” Pajari admitted.
Latvian Martins Sesks demonstrated in Poland and especially in his home rally in Latvia that a newcomer can succeed behind the wheel of a Rally1 car. However, the Rally Finland is a different challenge compared to Latvia and extremely familiar to every driver.
“It’s really hard to say how I will fare. Relatively quickly, the car starts to fit like a glove. You also have to drive such a car hard for it to work properly,” Pajari explained.
“It’s really difficult to say what could be a realistic goal. I definitely don’t have any specific result target, but I’ll try to drive in the spirit of the rally.”
