A common and deeply ingrained belief within the rallying community is that only an experienced driver can succeed in the World Rally Championship, but over the years this notion has been proven at least partly wrong.
Oliver Solberg won the Rally Estonia with very limited experience, despite having no prior knowledge of the current Rally1 cars. Likewise, Sami Pajari has succeeded this season in events where he had no previous experience. A good example is the Rally Kenya held in the spring, where Pajari performed better than expected.
Throughout this season, Pajari has repeatedly stated that he is simply gathering experience in the top category. And he has often been criticised for it.
However, Pajari himself is well aware that this explanation will no longer suffice. At some point, he must simply show raw pace.
“In one way, I will never catch them with the experience, so I think at one point you just need to kind of say to yourself that ‘OK now I have enough experience,’” the Finnish driver told Dirtfish, referring of course to his competitors.
“And still you then just need to fight with them,” he added.
Pajari cites fellow Finn Kalle Rovanperä as an example, who entered the World Rally Championship at a very young age and immediately began to deliver results.
“That’s like the case what happened with Kalle [Rovanperä] for example, like he’s still by far less experienced than some of the guys but he has already enough to fight with them,” Pajari pointed out.
This season marks Pajari’s first full year in the top category of the World Rally Championship. The Finn has occasionally shown strong pace, though at times more could have been expected of him.
“So I’m trying to find that moment when we can really start to challenge them properly,” Pajari said.
The rally taking place in Central Europe after mid-October will be the 15th top-category event of Pajari’s career. Pajari feels that his development curve is now rising. He already drove a strong event in Chile, perhaps his best performance of the season.
“I think in a way, yes. The performance was really, really solid and clearly now there were many, many stages where we were doing exactly the same [time] like basically anyone else,” he said.
“So that’s really, really nice to see and really, really cool because in a way… yeah, it’s still part of the learning at this point of the career, but still, step by step, we really need to be fighting with the others. So, I’m happy with that,” Pajari continued.
