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Once a year the best drivers in the world will meet in the Finnish province’s largest sheet acrobatic show in the world. And nothing can the Rally Finland accompany better than a motorcycle.


Ari is pissed. It is generally not easy to bring to the mind of a seasoned stoic Finns out of balance, but this is something else. The sauna is too cold. The average untrained Europeans, whom he invited to rally his party would evaluate the weather in the wood-paneled cabin quite a challenging mix of tropical circulation and sultry desert afternoon, but the natives seem afraid at 70 degrees already, of contracting a bladder infection. Ari goes out to complain.

How ridiculous is located in front of the arrivals from Teuton with his micro-oilskins. The report believed the German summer low on the way north. The thermometer in Helsinki was 29 degrees instead. Sauna was announced during the ride to Jyvaskyla. For six weeks, a more or less stable high-pressure area is located on the north-eastern corner of Europe. It is here above the warmest summer since records began.

Outside by the lake, the children still leave after nine plop into the lake.

Until late in the evening the sky is red. On the way into the rented cabin draws on the ground fog, the lakes are as smooth as cast in resin, a young bull moose jumps over a meadow of it, as it the roar of the two-cylinder gets too close. One would perhaps instead of the iPod Zappelmusik what should replace Peaceful Sibelius.

Anyway Finland radiates from every corner of tranquility. The long journeys through deep woods have something meditative. People are moving rather slowly, the same goes for their voices; the sound is always something deeper than our usual one. Evil tongues say, Jyvaskyla fits well to it was a sleepy town that comes alive on weekend evenings at best, when hordes of young people aspire to the Finnish handbag (10 / 2 liters of beer in cans Pappgebinde) for the next party.

Around 100,000 people live here, the city’s most famous son was the architect Alvar Aalto – if you can time the athlete in mind. Jyvaskyla Matti Nykänen comes from, among the most legendary Flying Finn, who once ruled over all the big jumps in the world, until the alcohol began to dominate him.

But there’s still the other flying Finns, slim lad with milk faces, which have sometimes shown with 30 still to pass before the disco. But beware; these Bubis are giants in their world. As an eight-year-old she sit on Daddy’s lap for the first time at the helm, with twelve they are falling over themselves with daddy’s tractor, with 14 they are on private forest roads for the first time faster than dad ever was.

With 18 driver’s license and then they have a racing license to durchzuzoomen quite legally with 200 cases between man and bear fat, thick spruce rocks under the wheels firmly baked clay with a thin Steinchenauflage or not rarely even air. If not drifted, is flying on the program. A computational engineer-net before the cars are at 1200 kilometers of testing over 20 kilometers in the air.

The last ice age pushed together the otherwise flat country like a corrugated iron roof. The nature of many roads wind and bucking through the area and form an endless collection of tops and sinks. Most of them are full of water running. Finland is covered by forest, 85 percent, the rest are lakes. “Land of a Thousand Lakes” is the understatement of the century, there are actually 180,000, in central Finland alone 65 000 standing waters.

The landscape is because of all the trees, rocks and waters quite impassable, there are only a few stages to the access roads. Even the mighty Russian army failed in the Second World War with the plan, the relatively newly independent state of Finland breaks times so just under the nail, because the tanks on the narrow forest roads in traffic jam. Do you think the first stand up, everyone?

Today at the rally weekend, there will be a veritable migration, a quarter million of the children on a regular basis to make Suomis rally. In addition to coolers full of beer, some music still carry the same equipment or sofas in the whole forest. And so today the Finns jam on the way to Leustu, and if the first rally car is already started, yet not all will have found a parking space. Up ahead are friendly young girl who cash in but relentlessly. Some people will just before his car off the road and marched on foot.

The Green Party complains that all this was a senseless burning of resources and also unhealthy. The organizers countered that this weekend of July for many Finns, the only one where they run about a dozen miles on foot.

The best of all possible solutions but has a motor and two wheels. The calculation is quite simple: Who is not stuck in traffic, creates more tests. In 80 percent of all everyday situations like the motorcyclist over the car be at a disadvantage in the Finland Rally, he is the king.

Besides Mexico, the Finnish organizers of the rally is the first to offer a special ticket for tunnels knight. Organization chief Jarmo Mahonen is himself an enthusiastic biker that led to the temporary center of the world have traveled delegation of the World Motor Sport FIA he once proudly his new six-cylinder BMW before.

The F 800 GS leaner effortlessly past paves the way to the plate avalanche. The little blue sticker on the windshield can all cashiers quickly step aside and wave through the two-wheeler. For holders of passports are biker special parking lots – of course as close to the rally route, sometimes even at the very front barrier tape. While many fans even kilometers in front of you, the rider stands on Grillikioski long ago and has been strengthened with the first Makkara, a mealy sausages, are sold from this parade more than a million.

The reason for the hype is first in the annual tradition. With cars sliding through the area belongs, on gravel in summer and winter on icy roads for every home everyday. Furthermore, it is about the prospects of success: The Finns love winners, only a small nation does not have too many of them, not even in winter sports. In motor sports, the paltry Finland but a world power that has taken every third World Rally Championship titles and already spawned three Formula 1 world champion.

The last is Kimi Raikkonen, and had the in-circuit driving tired and eventually moved to the coarse camp. Kimi has a superior driving skills, it drifts with his Citroen DS3 WRC with four-wheel drive and 300 hp turbo skillfully around the corners, leaps bravely over the hills, but in the end the former GP-Star modest ninth. This is not just race track, but what kind of adults.

The average speed on the Finnish gravel roads is not rare beyond 120 km / h. On the fastest tops bounce speed is 170 km / h, jumping the car and dances, wants to break constantly on routes that lead hardly ever longer than 200 meters straight ahead, and it is in gear usually inserted the fifth or sixth wave, one has Then just draw a bit more.

Most rally stars seem unimpressive at first glance, but are extremely hard-nosed dogs. Who to six times roll into the undergrowth and then announced: “The pace was okay, but the curve was too narrow,” reaps the highest esteem. A Finnish youngster may at any time a car worth a detached house scrap, as long as he was in the lead up to that.

Rally drivers are even in Motor sports as completely gaga, perhaps there is reason why so many points of contact with enduro or motocross. Leader Sebastien Loeb is rarely at home, if they do, he roasts usually with a KTM through the country. Ex-world champion Tommi Makinen Rally rose after the phase-out for fun in a competition enduro. No matter whether two or four wheels, the main thing quickly and transversely.

Christian Loriaux is technical director at Ford and has just signed with the legendary Six Days. With his 250cc KTM, he will work for a good purpose, a week after the rally on dirt tracks through Finnish forests.

His goal: “I want to hold out longer than Steve McQueen. He was in East Germany once 64ster, but on the third day he has departed. “The seven-time World Enduro Champion Kari Tiainen travels in return regularly by motorcycle to the rally weekend to see what their colleagues on four wheels in the woods of Keuruu, and perform Laukkaa Jamsa.

And that would be many like a Hollywood movie trick, it would not have even been there when Latvala toboggan through the medium fast right hand bend in a valley, then the tax breaks to the left, the rear part can be his Ford Fiesta narrowly entlangschmirgeln a few young birches and through the side window aiming broadside hunts over the next hill, where a grown rock cancel out at the inner edge of the entire car.

This all happens at a speed of four meters in width 120th it should now cross him wear in the conservation, where at least three times befit over, but that does not happen. Soft bounces one chassis, the wheels can slide down again after a meter grip. Already, the Finn is back fully on the gas, the lurking photographer’s beschmeißt in the woods with shovels full of dirt and raving to the next hilltop.

And yet Latvala is not the winner, world champion Sebastien Loeb is still faster. The Frenchman is probably the best driver in the history of mankind, and the sign and the Finns. The former gymnast from Alsace has five times won the Rallye Monte Carlo, he is on his way to the eighth world title – albeit in a row. But what counts even more is that he wins for the second time in Finland. This has made no other non-Finn.

The Finns in Finland defeated, which offers plenty to talk in the sauna.

The same is now coming slowly to operating temperature. It’s such mucke celled 85 degrees, and Heikki has just increased the degree of intolerability with a neat scoop water or a tick. Risto also comes in and takes the same trowel in hand. “Just one?” “Ahhh.” “I worth as a yes,” he says, and throws another surge of water on the stove. When the boiling smoke clears, it’s time to devote to the real issues: So Ari, as was now again at the last World Cup sauna? The Russian was drugged and the Finn was unconscious, or was it vice versa?