Hirvonen has been involved in rallying since 1998, but first demonstrated his abilities in 2002 behind the wheel of a mono-drive racing car, taking first place in the Finnish Formula 2. The same year in Italy, Mikko competed for the Subaru Cup and even took the lead in the series, but unfortunately lost the title in the last stage of the race.

After an unremarkable debut in Monte Carlo, Hirvonen spent the rest of the season flat, without much achievement. This precipitated his move to the Subaru team, with which he spent 2004, a year as quiet as the previous one. In 2005, the driver had to return to racing as a privateer, and by moving into his familiar 2003 Ford, Mikko was finally able to make a good impression, topping the standings at the Acropolis Rally. That performance put him back in the Ford factory team, and a third-place finish at the Spanish Rally guaranteed him a co-driver spot for 2006.

Facts

Hirvonen gave a lot of support to Markus Grönholm and together they were able to achieve a Ford victory in the constructors’ cup. At the same time Mikko got his first WRC win in Australia. In 2007 he had even better results, coming first in Norway, Japan and Great Britain, finishing in the top three ten times all season, as well as giving BP Ford its second team title.

At the end of the year, he finished third in the individual ranking, and in 2008, he replaced Markus Grönholm as the team’s main driver. Mikko Hirvonen is the first driver to achieve this status at such an early age. But he has rightfully taken the spot and had his most successful season to date.
Together with Jari-Matti Latvala, the team’s co-driver, Hirvonen scored three wins and was up against Sébastien Loeb himself until the penultimate stage of the competition.

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The company’s designers made so many changes to improve the performance of the car that they had to release a new BMW 2002 model. Later the company created a special department for rally, which helped to develop the car. The project was led by Helmut Bein, the man who first started in a BMW 1602. The first victories BMW brought drivers Rani Voll and Rauno Altonen, but the only one who achieved good results was Bein, taking first place in West Germany.

The car had a good feel for the track, thereby giving the pilots more power. Bain was always coming up with modifications for rally cars, but BMW didn’t understand his involvement in rallying and financing of the branch was stopped. It is worth mentioning several pilots who brought several victories to the BMW team, Bjorn Valdegaard and Achim Verbold.

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Evans initially appeared to have withdrawn due to mechanical damage from the incident, but the Welshman later explained that problems with the hybrid powertrain component were to blame. Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville, who was trailing Rovanpera by around 20 seconds all Sunday, took advantage of Evans’ exit into second place. The Belgian couldn’t close the gap to the leader, but his speed was enough to finish ahead of Esapekka Lappi, who was trailing. Lappi himself was four seconds behind Neuville before the last stage, but he couldn’t catch up with his rival.

The other Hyundai driver was much less fortunate than Neuville. Ott Tänak dropped out of the race on Friday: his car had essentially the same thing that happened to Evans’ car, namely a failure of the hybrid component. As a result, the Estonian finished outside the top ten. But nonetheless he managed to win the power stage and get 5 points for it. M-Sport driver Adrien Furmo couldn’t make it to Sunday’s first special because of the problems he had on the road section. Most likely, like on Saturday, it was the loss of engine power. The best of M-Sport was Gus Greensmith, who finished the Rally Sweden in fifth place.

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As the day went on, the Finn nearly crashed his car twice, but climbed from fourth place to second, stopping 8.3 seconds behind Tänak. Sunday’s four specials would decide everything.

Ott was the fastest on the first of them, the second finished in a tie, and Calle took the lead on the third. Now, before the decisive stage – where, in addition, bonus points were awarded – the rivals were separated by exactly ten seconds.

Rovanpera stayed second and Lappi finished third, even though he flipped during the penultimate stage: the Toyota driver fell into a ditch in a fast turn, made three flips, smashed his windows and radiator.

Despite this, the car was able to keep going and lost only 18 seconds. True, the crew had to stop at a nearby pond and add water to the cooling system, but such an outcome of the accident should still be considered great luck.

Elfyn Evans was the best of those, who doesn’t represent Scandinavia or Baltics. He confirmed the Toyota’s speed with a fourth result, although he lost time on Saturday due to a suspension failure.

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Rallying on asphalt tracks has a peculiarity: cars often pull rocks and rubble from the curb when cutting corners, thus creating an increasingly slippery surface for other competitors. So it’s no surprise that the drivers had a tough time at the first-ever FIA World Rally Championship in Croatia, too. Gravel was scattered in almost every corner.

ŠKODA pilots won the WRC3 category

For several specials, ŠKODA Motorsport’s private teams retained the top three places in the WRC3 class. However, on Sunday morning, the winners of the 2019 FIA European Rally Championship, Chris Ingram (Great Britain) and Ross Whittock (Great Britain) of the SXM Competition team, driving the ŠKODA FABIARally2 evo, pulled off the route, losing several minutes. But Polish and Finnish crews managed to keep their positions. Kajetan Kajetanovic and Maciej Szczepaniak of the LOTOS rally team on ŠKODA FABIA Rally2 evo led in the WRC3 classification. Finland’s Emal Lindholm and Mikael Korhonen, driving the same model for the Toksport WR team, finished second, just over a minute short of the top three. Ingram and Whittock from Great Britain finished fifth.

Croatian Rally results (WRC2 standings)

• Østberg/Eriksen (Østberg/Eriksen Norway/Norway), Citroen C3 Rally2, 3:01:23.7 h
• Suninen/Markkula (Suninen/Markkula Finland/Finland), Ford FiestaRally2 Mk2, +28.5s
• Bulacia/Der Ohannesian (Bulacia/Der Ohannesian Bolivia/Argentina), ŠKODA FABIA Rally2 evo, +2:02.7 min
• Brazzoli/Barone (Brazzoli/Barone Italy/Italy), ŠKODA FABIA Rally2 evo, +29:10.3 min
• Mikkelsen/Fløene (Mikkelsen/Fløene Norway/Norway), ŠKODA FABIA Rally2 evo, +39:42.2 min

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Meanwhile, two potential contenders for the title in WRC-2 Open were finally eliminated. Firstly, it is the Frenchman Yoan Rossel, who managed to lose the third position because of the “roof” on the final Power Stage and lost all chances for the crown (if he had arrived without incident, he could have become a vice-leader of the championship and a serious threat to Mikkelsen). Secondly, Nikolay Gryazin lost even theoretical chances for the final success – however, the “gesture of goodwill” in Finland, where the Russian crashed his Skoda Fabia Rally2 evo during the shakedown, helped him more. The situation is similar in the WRC-2 Junior, where only two can win the title – Finn Emil Lindholm (he has enough to take 10 points in Catalonia or Japan to become the champion) and Briton Chris Ingram (he has one more start left, but even a victory does not guarantee his overall success). Quite an interesting picture is observed in the “veteran” category of WRC-2 Masters, which unexpectedly turned out to be surprisingly popular – still we have ten crews that have started at least three rounds. The Italian Mauro Miele still retains the leadership here, but the German Armin Kremer is pressing hard on him – he has already won his third victory, moved to the third position and is now preparing for the next round in New Zealand. You can be sure that in all three categories of WRC-2 (Open, Junior, Masters) a lot will be decided in New Zealand and Catalonia – let’s see how the course of events will be.

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Such successes have come relatively recently. Until 1996, all the attention of the manufacturer was focused on off-road rally-raids, where the car ZX Rally Raid was performing, and Citroen had no serious success in rallying at the highest level. However, by the mid-90s it seriously returned to classic rallying. In the early years, the team worked on the ZX hatchback, on which the master of asphalt racing, Jesus Puras, became champion of Spain. In 1998, however, it was decided to work on the Xsara. This work began in 1999, and its result was the Xsara WRC.

His full-fledged world rally debut was in 2001 at the Rally Catalunya. The start was impressive: Jesus Puras and Philippe Bugalski went first and second before dropping out for technical reasons. Bugalski was sixth in the gravel stage in Greece, but the Xsara showed its true strength on asphalt – Puras led in Sanremo and won in France. Meanwhile, young Frenchman Sébastien Loeb became champion in the Super 1600 classification at the wheel of a Citroen Saxo. He later joined the main team and finished second in Sanremo.

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