Tough day two for Pontus Tidemand in Finland

Friday’s leg of Rally Finland caused trouble for many drivers, among them Pontus Tidemand. After a good finish of the second competitive day, he is in third place.

The Finnish roads were rough on Pontus’ Ford Fiesta R2 during the second day of Rally Finland. The problems began already on the morning’s first stage – a puncture and a broken wishbone slowed him down and caused difficulties on the first four stages. Despite that, Pontus had climbed up to second place before the midday service break.

Unfortunately it took more time than allowed to fix the car, which made Pontus and co-driver Ola Fløene late out of service and thereby got three minutes and ten seconds of time penalty.

On the first stage of the afternoon, the eleventh stage of the rally, they were fastest in the JWRC category but with the time penalty, they dropped down to sixth place and more problems were to come.

“It was really rough”, says Pontus. “We tried to avoid rocks, but picked up a puncture anyway and lost time on stage 12 and stage 13 was a real challenge.”

On stage 14, Pontus got another stage win when he was 17 seconds faster than Yeray Lemes. Just like Thursday, Friday evening ended with the super special stage Killeri and even though Pontus pushed a little too much, he set a third fastest time and was only 1.6 seconds behind the stage winner.

Results JWRC after day 1

1. A. Amberg
2. S. Pärn +2:06.8
3. P. Tidemand +3:15.8
4. Y. Lemes +3:38.1
5. M. Aasen +3:55.9
6. M. Burri +8:49.1

Photo: André Lavadinho