Behind the Scenes in the WRC - Rally Finland 2010

 Blog post - by Rachel Cavers, Press Officer, The Inside Line.

Wow, that was one busy and extremely hot WRC round!

Last week was my first time in Finland, the home of rallying – and nothing could have prepared me for how popular the sport is over there.

We were based in a small student city called Jyväskylä and there was a huge buzz from the moment we arrived. Throughout the rally, the service park was packed and there was entertainment from start to finish – the rally organisers put in a tremendous effort and everything seemed to run like clockwork. It was also extremely hot – on Thursday, the temperatures in the service park topped 36 degrees Celsius and apparently it was the hottest day in Finland’s history.

From a PR perspective, Finland was a very exciting round for us as we had four-time World Rally Champion, Juha Kankkunen driving for the Stobart M-Sport Ford Rally Team. I’d been liaising with his PR contact in Finland in the run up to the event as there has been lots of media requests for Juha in the weeks running up to the rally. However, I hadn’t prepared myself for just how popular Juha was - during the Ford media function the press swamped Juha and it was difficult to try and tear him away so he could fulfill his duties in accordance with his schedule.

Throughout the rally we had a TV crew from London filming a documentary about the logistics behind the Stobart World Rally Team which is due to be broadcast on Channel 5 later this year. We had the TV crew over at M-Sport HQ to see the trucks off on their journey before I left and they were following our team right through until the end of the event, interviewing our drivers and filming a lot of behind the scenes WRC action. We also had a journalist from Top Gear Magazine in Finland who was doing a compare and contrast feature on Juha and the 2007 Formula One Champion, Kimi Räikkönen. Top Gear Magazine has a readership of 1.9 million so it will be fantastic coverage for the team.

On Thursday morning Matthew Wilson did a photo shoot for the new line of Stobart clothing which is due out later this year. The new merchandise features the patterned livery on Matthew’s Ford Focus RS WRC and items include caps, jackets and t-shirts – the photos will be used on the website and should hopefully be available to buy online shortly.

I had also arranged a time lapse video to be taken in Finland during a 15 minute service in collaboration with one of Stobart’s sponsors, Muc-Off Motorsport Cleaning. During Shakedown on Thursday morning, we got a few promo shots of Matthew’s mechanics using the Muc-Off products on the car and this was then merged into the time lapse video of the first service on Friday morning. I’ve still not seen the final version as there are some final touches being made, but I think it’ll be a great viral video which we’ll be putting on YouTube and publicising through various other outlets.

On the Thursday afternoon Juha had an interview with Neil Cole for the official WRC programme on Dave, and this was followed by a media lunch which Juha attended. The last 30 minutes of the media lunch involved a question and answer session with Juha and the Finnish media which seemed to work well. Later that day our drivers took part in a PR activity on the main stage in the service park whereby the drivers had to race each other with remote control rally cars. In the Stobart team Henning beat Matthew but Petter was the overall winner – apparently he used to be a Norwegian champion in remote control car racing so it was no surprise that he won! This was then followed by a driver autograph signing session which our Stobart crews all took part in.

In comparison to my previous WRC round in Bulgaria, Finland was a dream from a logistical point of view. In Bulgaria we had a 30-minute drive between Rally HQ and the service park but in Finland everything was a ten-minute walk. We had eight Ford Fiesta S2000 cars in the S-WRC, four Ford Focus RS World Rally Cars in the Stobart M-Sport Ford Rally Team and 14 Fiestas running in the FSTi series - so it was an extremely busy round to try and keep track of how all of our guys were getting on. For this reason, I based myself in the manufacturers room in the service park for the majority of the time that the rally was on. I find the environment easier to work as it is quieter than the service park and allowed me to keep track of the split times, listen to World Rally Radio and update our social media sites and keep the end of leg reports up to date. When our drivers got back into service, I would make my way over to the media zone to gather all the quotes.

On Friday morning, the Citroen press officer had suggested we all meet in their service area for a quick coffee and catch up to brainstorm some PR ideas for the year’s remaining WRC rounds. The BP Ford Abu Dhabi press officers were there along with Petter Solberg’s PR, the FIA media delegate, the Citroen PR team and also North One TV. It was a great chance to get round the table and share some ideas and catch up on how everything is going from an individual team perspective, but we didn’t have long to talk before the next stage was up and running and we all had to rush back to work.

Now I’m back in the office and preparing for Rallye Deutschland – another busy WRC round and the second asphalt event of the season. The Stobart M-Sport Ford Rally Team have got another exciting addition to the crew for this round – Francois Duval. Last time he contested Rallye Deutschland Duval finished third overall - so fingers crossed for a podium finish for the Stobart team in Germany!