Norway looked really, really nice. A lot of snow, stages in a beautiful condition, it reminded me a lot of the Arctic Rally back home. On that event we always have a lot of long straights with sharp corners at the end, like here, also like here the stages are narrower than in Sweden. There was some loose gravel and soft snow on the top, all of which meant that we were running ninth on the road which could be a good starting position for me. It was necessary to think how the conditions might change before the second passage through the stages, to see how hard will then be the surface for the spikes. The last time we were here two years ago, stages were quite bumpy, but this time they were smoother.

We now have to run the new wide SottoZero tyres, instead of the traditional narrower tyres. If you have just a little amount of loose snow, not too much, these tyres will be very good. If a lot of fresh snow falls, like it did here two years ago, then the wider tyre will harder to drive. In those situations we rely on the extra pressure of the tyre on the ground which you get with the narrower tyres. In the current conditions you skid over the top of the snow rather like aquaplaning that happens on water. Indiferent care sunt gandurile mele aveam nevoie de un rezultat bun dupa Irlanda.

I know that I have finally gained a result this year but if I can be honest I must say that I was not really happy, in fact I was disappointed at coming third in Norway. I went to Norway wanting to fight for victory after having won the Swedish Rally this time last year. I lost too much time on Friday morning because we fitted suspension that was too hard. We remembered the last time we were in Norway we found to our surprise that the roads were often a lot rougher than expected, so that was the reason for that. Anyway we were able to fight back on Friday afternoon, but then on Saturday morning I lost too much time on the long famous Mountain stage. In the afternoon when we fitted softer suspension we made some good times on the stages, but we were too far behind by then. So on the Sunday we cruised to be sure to finish safely, albeit in third place. I really needed to finish, whatever else I was thinking about

My teammate Mikko had already tried the softer suspension on the Shakedown before Norway and kept this for the rally, which was the right thing to do. Of course I really do not know where we would have ended up if we had started off with the softer set-up like Mikko had done. We had one special panic during the final day. There were some really long fast stretches, where we were doing 190–200kph and a particular bend at the end of one stretch. I wanted to optimise my braking point for this bend, and slightly touched a snowbank in the bend. This maybe cost me only a couple of seconds or so, but then as we were driving further down the stage I discovered a bonnet pin had become detached, and I could see the bonnet beginning to flap around in front of me. I was terrified that it might suddenly fly open and smash the windscreen, especially if this happened on a faster part of the stage. If that happened, it would certainly have been "Game Over". I tried pumping the throttle pedal trying to force the bonnet down, and I just had to hope for the best. Fortunately it held itself in place. That was a scary moment for us.

Now we go to Cyprus, for quite different conditions. A nice warm country, a slow rally but a rally which has already led to a lot of controversy because it has been decided we must drive one whole day of tarmac stages on gravel tyres. I will tell you about that next time!

3mmm