JRM take outright victory in Finland

Jari Ketomaa scores first rally win for JRM

Posted: February 22, 2010 8:39 PM

JRM recorded its first outright victory this weekend, when Jari Ketomaa and co-driver Marko Sallinen won the second round of the Finnish Rally Championship in one of the team’s Mitsubishi Evolution Xs. Ketomaa led from the second stage and continued to extend his lead to win the event by a convincing margin of 41 seconds.

As part of its ongoing development programme for the Group N Evolution X, JRM joined up with the reigning Finnish Rally Champion for the Vaakuna Rally. Based in Mikkeli, this is Ketomaa’s most local event and one which he has now won five times.

Although having contested a full season in the MSA British Rally Championship in 2009, for the JRM team the trip to Finland brought with it a number of fresh challenges, not least of which were the weather conditions: snow covered roads and temperatures which were constantly below -20 degrees centigrade.

Before the event, Ketomaa carried out two days of testing in the car that was used by Gwyndaf Evans last year. After only his first run, Ketomaa commented on how good the JRM Evo felt straight out of the box and only minor adjustments to the suspension, transmission and engine-map settings were required.

The event featured a total competitive distance of 128 kilometres, split into seven special stages, the first of which saw Ketomaa take a considered approach in order to settle into his new car and judge the pace of the others around him.

Following the first service halt of the day, the Finnish Champion increased his pace on stage two and went into the lead by eight seconds. Then, stage-by-stage he increased his advantage, reporting that the car was feeling better and better as the event went on.

With no problems whatsoever in any of the seven stages, Ketomaa and Sallinen crossed the finish line to record the team’s first outright rally victory and establish that the JRM Mitsubishi is able to take on the best in Scandinavia – and win.

“I was impressed with the car right from the start”, said Ketomaa. “I really wanted to maintain my winning record in this event so it was important to me that I had a good car to do it. I was very pleased with its performance and I hope that if circumstances allow, I can do more with the team this year and perhaps even come to the UK for some events.”

Following the rally, JRM Operations Manager John Barnes commented:
“We went to Finland as part of our Evo X development programme and to come away with a result like this is just fantastic. The whole event was a learning exercise, especially because of the weather conditions and I’m therefore delighted that we have achieved exactly what we set out to do and to prove that our cars are both reliable and competitive.”

The JRM team are intending to continue the development of the Evolution X with a series of tests and events during 2010. This includes entering the opening round of the MSA British Rally Championship, the Bulldog Rally North Wales on 27th March, with Gwyndaf Evans back behind the wheel.