During the months that preceded the event we carefully went through the rally's course and special stage plans in order to select the ones we'd like to see. The event was composed of 23 special stages and you can easily imagine it is impossible to see them all. We arrived at Jyv skyl on August the18th. We took the opportunity of being 2 days early and went out to check SS1 and 2 which we had chosen not to see during the competition. The special stages were, of course, not closed at that time and we gladly run through them only to be impressed by the huge jumps they were holding and the quality of the Finnish gravel.
Finnish gravel is very fine and sometimes as fine as sand.
It holds no big rocks or holes that destroy WRC cars in events such as the Acropolis. The day was dry with some clouds covering the sky. Octavia WRC Armin Schwartz had already retired. Juha Kankkunen was third 0.2 sec behind Markus and Didier Auriol fourth 0.4 sec behind Juha. We then moved to special stage 6, Laukaa , 12.36km long where we arrived 2 hours before the first car was to start the stage.