Motorsport Ireland Young Rally Driver of the Year, Callum Devine, is gearing up for the biggest challenge of his rallying career as the 24 year old Derry driver will compete on the legendary Rally Finland this weekend.

The Finnish round of the World Rally Championship is widely regarded as one of the most challenging events on the calendar given the undulating nature of the tree lined forest roads and the high average speeds. The event, formerly known as the “rally of the 1000 lakes” could also be referred to as the “rally of the 1000 jumps” as the cars will spend much of the weekend airborne!

Finland will be Callum’s 4th round of the 5 round Junior World Rally Championship (JWRC) and it offers some unique challenges to him and co-driver, Brian Hoy. Speaking ahead of the event Callum said; “Finland will be very different to anything I’ve done before. One of the biggest challenges we’re going to have will be on recce where we will have to guess as best as we can where the car is going to jump at competition speed and how far. Typically you might get 5-6 jumps in a single rally, in Finland we’re going to be getting at least twice that on almost every stage!

“It’s also a very high speed event so being able to trust my pacenotes will be vital. We were extremely disappointed to miss out on a career best finish in the last round in Portugal and the non-finish there has effectively made our shot at the title impossible, however I would still like to impress in Finland and we can still learn a lot from the event. The fact we have nothing to lose could be a good thing as others start to focus on the championship.”

Rally Finland, round 4 of the JWRC takes place from the 26th-29th of July. This year’s action covers 317.26 kilometres across 23 stages. The action begins on Thursday evening with a short spectator stage before a marathon Friday which will see competitors tackle 10 stages. Saturday, while only providing 8 stages is the longest leg of the event with just shy of 143 competitive kilometres on offer. Sunday sees a pair of stages repeated including the legendary Ruuhimäki test to close out the event. The 2018 JWRC is run in association with M-Sport and each competing crew uses identical Ford Fiesta R2T cars with 1 litre, turbocharged engines and Pirelli tyres. Points are awarded for overall places as well as for each individual stage win. Following Finland, Turkey will host the last round of the 2018 JWRC and it may provide a sting in the championship tail as double points will be on offer on that round.