The World Rally Championship returns to Poland after a six-year hiatus. For Lauri Joona, Polish rally roads are familiar only from the perspective of a spectator.
“I have never competed in Poland. I’ve been to watch the WRC and ERC rallies in Poland a couple of times, but that’s all my experience with Poland,” said Joona, ahead of the race.
The Rally Poland will follow the familiar structure and schedule of the race week. The rally, starting on Thursday in Mikolajki, includes 19 special stages over four days, covering a little over 303 special stage kilometres in total.
“The rally will be very high-speed. The roads are quite narrow and soft, so there will probably be a lot of ruts. The nature of the roads somewhat resembles the roads in Estonia,” Joona predicted for the upcoming rally.
The Rally Poland is the seventh WRC round of the season. For Joona and co-driver Janni Hussi, competing with a Skoda Fabia RS Rally2 car in the TGS Motorsport team, it is their fifth rally in the WRC2 class this season.
“It’s nice to be back on a high-speed route; it’s a bit more familiar to me. We had good tests before Midsummer, where we improved the car. In that regard, we can be confident.”
There are 22 crews in the WRC2 class of the Rally Poland. From the previous rounds of the season, Joona and Hussi have achieved one podium finish and scored points for sixth place in their class.
“We are going into the race with a good feeling! Of course, we’re aiming to do our best. It’s hard to say how far that will take us in the results. We’ve worked a lot to be more competitive than before, and we have strong confidence in that.”
