Emil Lindholm wins on home soil after rival’s disqualification
The Finnish driver tops a bumper entry list for this week’s Jyväskylä-based fixture in a Toksport-prepared Škoda Fabia Rally2 Evo and has his sights set on a maiden victory in the WRC’s premier support category.
Lindholm finished third overall at the previous round in Estonia despite dropping time with a puncture on the opening day.
He currently holds third in the WRC2 Junior standings and hopes to improve on last year’s Finland result, where he ended third in the RC2 class as well as winning WRC3. “We were third out of all the Rally2 cars last year,” he told WRC.com. “I hope we should be able to build on that – that’s a reasonable expectation, I believe.
Sami Pajari, also driving a Toksport WRT run Fabia, impressed on his second-ever WRC2 start. The 20-year-old constantly set a podium-challenging pace and trailed Heikkilä by 6.8sec at the finish.
Lindholm won four out of eight stages on Saturday. Due to a faulty starter motor meant Lindholm had to jump-start his Škoda Fabia Rally2 several times, but it didn’t affect his speed on the stages and the 26-year-old ended the day just 10.7sec behind of the leader, as well as top WRC2 Junior.
Even Emil and Reeta pushed hard and rather succeeded to catch the leader, there weren’t enough stages to clinch the win. But soon, news would spread. Teemu Suninen has been disqualified from Secto Rally Finland on Sunday night after the front bumper of his car was found to be underweight. This disqualification means Škoda Fabia Rally2 driver Emil Lindholm, who finished 7.7sec behind in the rally, takes home maximum points.
