Quotes:
Juha Kankkunen (Deputy Team Principal)
“It’s always a special feeling to be starting Rally Finland. It was particularly the case for me as a Finnish driver during my career, and the feeling is much the same now being part of this local team. There’s been a great atmosphere already around the city in the last few days and so much support for us. This opening Harju stage is also fantastic for this, but the main focus for the drivers is to try to get around it cleanly, because it can be quite tricky. From tomorrow I think we can anticipate a close fight in the forests: all our drivers have the speed to win this rally, but we also expect to be pushed hard by our rivals.”

Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33)
“As always we’ve had a really warm welcome coming here to Jyväskylä. This is a brilliant event and we want to make the most of our last opportunity to drive these roads with this generation of car. We had some rain fall earlier in the week which can hopefully help us a bit tomorrow opening the road. The sun has been back out since to dry the roads but we’ll fight as hard as we can and see what we can do.”

Sébastien Ogier (Driver car 1)
“I’m happy to be here in Finland, driving on these amazing roads and with big support for our team, including in this first stage here in the middle of the city. It’s nice to have Julien back alongside me for one last time and I’m glad that he accepted this last-minute call. We’ll try to do our best, with Vincent and his family also in our thoughts. We have a great car and let’s try to enjoy it.”

Oliver Solberg (Driver car 99)
“The atmosphere is amazing being here at Rally Finland for the first time as a TGR-WRT driver. I made a few mistakes in this Harju stage and didn’t have the best feeling with the mixed surface, but we just have to be awake tomorrow morning and be ready to push flat-out. I feel happy in the car, and there’s a lot of new stages which can help me and my lack of experience in this car on these roads.”

Takamoto Katsuta (Driver car 18)
“It’s always really nice to start Rally Finland with this Harju stage. This city feels like home for me and there’s a lot of people around, including many of my friends. The Finnish fans are supporting me and the team a lot, and that gives me big motivation and energy to try and get a better result than ever before here. It won’t be easy, but I feel good and I will be trying my best.”

Sami Pajari (Driver car 5)
“This first stage of Rally Finland is a really special one to drive with an amazing reception from the fans: it’s been really cool to see so many people cheering for us already this week. Harju is also quite a tricky stage; we tried to make a good time but it’s never too easy. The main thing is we are through OK and ready for tomorrow. We know that we can fight for the win and we’ll do our best.”

End of day one (Thursday):
1 Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) 2m06.7s
2 Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +1.1s
3 Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +1.2s
4 Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +1.2s
5 Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +1.8s
6 Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +1.9s
7 Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +2.9s
8 Esapekka Lappi/Enni Mälkönen (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +3.0s
9 Jon Armstrong/Shane Byrne (Ford Puma Rally1) +3.3s
10 Robert Virves/Jakko Viilo (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) +4.1s
(Results as of 21:30 on Thursday, for the latest results please visit www.wrc.com)

What's next?
For Friday the action moves into the forests north-east of Jyväskylä where a loop of four stages is run twice. The classic Laukaa test is reversed for this year and paired with returning Saarikas plus the new Sydänmaa and Hoho tests. Another run through Harju completes the longest day of the event at 127.72 competitive kilometres.