Finnish title joy for veteran Salo

31st August 2010

By Giles Wade

Juha Salo won his fifth Finnish Rally Championship title at the weekend, taking second place on the Vartti SM-Rally.

Salo, 34, has won the crown with one round to spare. The Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X driver was, once again, one of the frontrunners on this year’s Rally Finland. Competing on his home round of the World Rally Championship as a P-WRC wildcard, Salo led the category until he crashed on stage seven. Following the Jyvaskyla-based event, he returned to the domestic series in an effort to make up for missing out on the title last year. Salo has won one event and been on the podium on every one of the series’ five rounds run so far.

The race for second in the season-long Finnish duel is a tense affair, with three drivers in with a shot at silver. Skoda driver Jarkko Miettinen moved clear after he finished third last weekend, ahead of Subaru’s Joonas Lindroos, who was just 1.6 seconds adrift of Miettinen. Kosti Katajamaki is the other driver in with a chance of second in the series.

Last weekend’s Vartti SM-Rally, which runs just north of Helsinki, was won by Marko Kakko in a Ford Fiesta S2000. It was the 33-year-old’s first national-level win.

The season ends with the SM Finnsco Ralli on September 25-26.