Marcus Gronholm's co-driver, Timo Rautiainen has said that it was a good decision to bring in some new roads for the recent Rally Finland, the latest round in this year's FIA World Rally Championship, which took place last weekend.

The Jyväskylä-based event is always one of the most challenging, fastest and popular on the calendar and this year the organisers took a number of steps to try and improve things - not that it affected the outcome, as Gronholm and Timo again won, for the seventh time in the last eight years.

Almost 50 per cent of the route was new for the 2007 edition and Rautiainen felt that was definitely a positive, even if it did increase their work load pre-event: “It was a challenge during the recce [with the changes to the route]. But it has been good for the rally because most of the roads – especially with the works cars – get broken quite badly. So it's good that we have some different roads,” he explained.

Another big change for this year concerned the Ouninpohja test, one of the most famous and fastest in the sport, which was back as a single 33.01 kilometre entity, having been split into two last year and in 2005 due to concerns over safety. Although three chicanes were added to keep speeds in check it once again proved popular – if rather scary too!

Asked about what it was like to have Ouninpohja back to its original state, Timo said it was a big plus.

“Good fun! Now, 24 hours later, it feels... OK but when we had just finished it the last thing we wanted to do was do it again! It's all because we had a very fast fight and we really didn't want to give up the fight [against Mikko Hirvonen],” he continued.

“We found some places where we were air born that we had not been before and we landed in places where we had not landed before and still we were equal with Mikko and in the beginning we were faster than him in the splits. It's a great stage but I think it's a very big struggle to drive it,” he added.

Hirvonen's co-driver, Jarmo Lehtinen also enjoyed the event, although his favourite test wasn't Ouninpohja: “For me [the 21.27 kilometre] Leustu test [SS15] has been always the best. It's flowing and nice and doesn't feel as dangerous as Ouninpohja,” he chipped in.

Emil Axelsson, who co-drove Patrik Sandell to honours in the FIA Junior Rally Championship category meanwhile, also gave the event the thumbs up overall: “It is quite a difficult event and the stages are really tricky - some are not as in as good a condition as Ouninpohja. I always enjoy Finland though because of the speed,” he summed-up.