Rally Finland: Skoda leg two notes

The Skoda Motorsport World Rally Team completed the second leg of Rally Finland with Janne Tuohino in 10th place and Armin Schwarz in 11th.

Jani Paasonen did not restart this morning as the penalties he collected under the SupeRally system would have been impossible to overcome.

On today's stages Janne increased his pace and again set several top 10 stage times. He moved into ninth place by SS15 but on SS16, the longest stage of the event, the large amount of loose rocks and gravel slowed him sufficiently to cost him a place.

Armin was able to move up from his overnight 14th with another steady drive although any realistic hopes of catching Henning Solberg were lost when he had to revert to the manual gearshift on the 41kms Moksi-Leustu stage.

Tomorrow's final leg features two stages, each run twice, to the west of Jyvaskyla (totalling 66.56kms). The rally finishes in Jyvaskyla at 1450 (1350 CET).

Quotes:

Janne Tuohino: "This morning I tried to push a bit harder and I closed the gap to the people ahead of me. This afternoon's stages had a lot of loose gravel that didn't suit our set-up and I was disappointed to lose a place on SS16 which was especially rough. We will keep pushing tomorrow and see if we can recover the position."

Armin Schwarz: "The car has been fine again for most of the day but I had too soft tyres for the first runs over Ouninpohja and by the end of the first group of stages there was very little grip left. We lost the auto gearshift on SS16 but we survived and can still get a good result."

-skoda-