Hello.
 
I was competing at Rally Sarma on Saturday, the second round of the Latvian and Estonian Junior Rally Championships. As usual, I was driving the Peugeot 208 R2 and for the second event in a row, I finished second.
 
Like Rally Alūksne, the first rally of the season last month, last Saturday was another winter event – but this time there was quite a lot more snow. I learned so much more from this second event, I really felt like I made good progress with the car set-up and the feeling from the competition.
 
Driving the car on snow is a lot of fun, but it demands for you to be so precise in the way you drive. It's different if you are driving a World Rally Car, when you have full traction and lots of power to get you out of trouble, but for us we have only front-wheel drive and less power – we have to make sure we are keeping the car as straight as possible to keep the speed up.
 
It's true that we made some mistakes during the event, but we learned from them and that's definitely the most important thing.
 
The first loop of stages went really well: we were fastest on the first stage and led for the first loop. We slipped to second as the day went on and stayed there through the last two stages which were run at night. Again, I learned a lot about driving the car in the dark and the importance of pacenotes and really working closely with my co-driver Veronica Engan.
 
We are now second in both the Latvian and Estonian Junior Championships and really looking forward to the next event, which unfortunately isn't until May. Before then I have a lot of training and more schoolwork to do.
 
Thank you for all your support, and talk to you again soon.
 
Oliver.