Hey Moi from Helsinki,   Our trip thus far has been going very well. We were welcomed by friendly hosts after 31 hours traveling time to -6 degrees Celsius and a stunning beautiful snow and ice covered city of around 1 million people. I was very surprised by the pace our hosts driving on the treacherous roads which would see most Kiwi’s spinning and slithering into other traffic but I guess this is there home and after trying them the modestly studded tyres provide a suprising increase in grip.

We awoke to a -20C blue stunning blue sky day and after going outside now really understand the meaning of cold. Any part of your body which is exposed feels as if it’s getting frost bite and the ground is slippery everywhere as we both found out quite literally the hard way. We headed for testing where it was -21C. It’s amazing how quickly body diminishes even statying outside for a short time when your very well dressed. It is a requirement in rally’s here to carry matches, paper, and lot’s of warm gear encase you break down/crash, after first hand experience we can see what a must this is as a engine failure could otherwise turn fatal very very quickly.

Driving the left hand drive group N Mitsubishi Evo 8 on the ice was an enthralling and challenging adventure. The grip with the heavily studded Ice tyres varied from fair hard ice online to to very slippery snow/ice off line in the way the a gravel road is grippy online and slippery on the marbles offline. With hardpacked snow being the grippiest surface available and exteremly cold ice like we were on being just a bit to hard for the studs to get into we were having a lot of fun. After a couple of laps we found we were able to get good air over the 170KMPH jumps and balance the car through the slippery turns using a combination of power left foot braking and steering input. It felt sensational being able to hold a drift right through fast and slow tightening and opening corners. The ice and snow whilst slippery was more progressive than a gravel surface making everything more flowing and after some practice we were running the tail of the car off the snow banks in a way which is not possible anywhere else. The whole scenario is lethal and we found that to much easing of the power meant a loss of control far greater than on any other surface we have experienced and when your approaching a snowbank with an understeering attitude on it is a difficult discipline and balancing act to keep the power onwhilst avoiding it and braking. We ended up through a snow bank at one stage after getting it wrong but we were consisitently getting faster and the crew were extremely impressed right from the start. Our unofficial timing put us roughly on the same pace as Mika Solhberg (Ex british champion and Mika Hakinnens old flatmate) Infact our team owners friends include the best of F1 and rallying such as, Hakinen, Makinen, Gronholm, Marku Alen, Kaunkanen, Sohlberg, Passonen, Valimaki and Mika Salo who also rallly’s here.

It is another stunning day here today and we will be do a small amount of more testing later in the afternoon.