No pressure for Ketomaa in Finland

Former P-WRC star Jari Ketomaa has said that he is not under any pressure to score a good finish on this weekend's Rally Finland, his home event.

“I haven’t put any pressure on me what will be the position at the end. I’m sure if we can do our normal good driving and we don’t have any technical problems with the car the result will be very good because I’m very happy with the car.”

Ketomaa will contest his home event for the eighth time in his career, but it will be the only time he has ever driven WRC machinery on the rally, after driving a Subaru Impreza WRC in the 2009 edition of the event. The rest have been behind the wheel of Group N spec Impreza's, save last year when he drove a Ford Fiesta S2000, the baby brother of the car in which he will be competing this weekend.

This weekend, he will take part in a Ford Fiesta RS WRC, his first time behind the wheel of one of the new WRC cars. Ketomaa's 2009 Rally Finland on-board the Impreza WRC yielded a 7^th place finish at the end. He will be looking for a better result in the Fiesta RS WRC, but a lack of a proper test may hamper him. In all, he only got 75kms of a pre-event test in the car, but he says his prior experience of the event and the Fiesta S2000 will help compensate for his lack of testing.

“I got the whole day and at this point and I have to believe it’s enough. We got 75 kilometres and it could be less, just shakedown, so at least we have some experience, which is very useful. I knew a bit of what to expect from driving the Fiesta S2000. The engine power is good and we made some changes so I have an idea about what to expect.” he said.

Ketomaa will start at number 19 and will be run under the HJ-Autotalo team banner. Sitting alongside Ketomaa will be Mika Stenberg, with whom he has prior P-WRC experience.