Emil Lindholm to RallyRACC - Rally de España with Volkswagen
Team GRX’s Emil Lindholm, 22, and Mikael Korhonen, 33, are participating the second to last WRC event in Catalunya, Spain. The competition is Lindholm’s driving careers fourth WRC rally with a four-wheel drive car and first WRC rally driven in Spain.
In a little bit over two weeks Team GRX’s Volkswagen Polo GTI R5 driving Finnish twosome will start the route with number 53. Printsport is taking care of the car’s maintenance for the rally and the twosome’s place in the upcoming running order is around 25-30 cars.
“Pretty spectacular. Our partners invested more to this season and fulfilled our dream by supporting this latest project. A big thank you goes to them”, Lindholm says.
In the two previous years Lindholm and Korhonen have done the recceing to the stages of Rally de España so they know what to expect in advance.
“Despite one special stage we have all the pace notes of the route. This is the first of this type mixed surface rally for me where on opening day we are driving on gravel and next two days on asphalt. Our maintenance has 75 minutes on Friday night to change the car from gravel set-up to asphalt specifications. The suspension, cars height and geometry is changing”, Lindholm tells.
“I haven’t driven our Volkswagen on asphalt except in Rally Finland on SS Harju with gravel tires. I still believe everything is going to work out and go well on this event. Rally’s gravel road surfaces are very hard on some places and then again asphalt roads can be pretty smooth. Our goal is to get to the finish line, avoid mistakes and get as much of experience of Southern European gravel and asphalt roads as we can” Lindholm states.
The second to last WRC rally is starting from Salou Friday 25th of October at 9:00 (UTC+3). On the opening day there is six gravel special stages, overall 129.70km, to be driven.
On Saturday and Sunday’s program there is only asphalt special stages. Saturday’s, 26th of October, route covers total seven special stages, 121.72km, and Sunday’s 27th of October 4 special stages total 74.14km. The drivers are expected at the finish line in Salou’s PortAventura Theme Park at 15:01 (UTC+3).
Photo: Merita Mäkinen
