WRC Finland

Hirvonen drove a terrific rally to get his first win at his home event. If he keeps driving like this for the rest of the season, the championship fight is going to go to last rally. Loeb was in hot pursuit until a pothole on day two damaged a wheel and he lost some time. He tried to recover, but he decided to play it safe and settled for second when it became obvious that Hirvonen was completely in control.

Finland has some spectacular jumps. On day two Novikov hit a jump way too hard which sent the car flying so high, that it started to flip backwards in the air. The in-car footage is just plain scary as the trees fall out of view until all you see is the sky! Novikov was lucky to get away that that. He wasn't so lucky later in the same stage when he hit tree, which ended his rally. Actually, that was his second encounter with a tree... He really wasn't having a good rally.

Kimi Raikkonen took a break from F1 and drove his first WRC in a Group N car. He did quite well but car trouble limited his performance. Unfortunately he lost it on stage 19 and rolled the car which ended his rally.

The rest of the season is going to be very exciting, assuming it is a straight fight to the end with nothing going wrong for either Loeb or Hirvonen. But this is rallying, so expect the unexpected.