GOLF 17 RALLY TEAM BACKGROUND


Golf 17 Rally team has been in the business since 1990. We attend to rally races and we also arrange the rally happenings. Now we have two active drivers and one 'maybe' driver in our team.

1. Marko Saarinen is a driver in the top class and he drives in Finland's champion series in the group A in 2004. He is an artist and lives in Tampere, Finland. He has driven rally since 1996.

2. Rauli Leiviskä is a A-junior driver. He lives in Viiala, Finland and he works as a metal worker. He has been driven rally since 2001. During 2004 a new car is completed for him, because his last car was crashed.

3. Marko Järvenpää is a driver in the top class. He works as a machinist, lives in Kalvola, Finland and he has already been driving rally over 10 years (since 1992). Now he has a little break for driving.

Also Mika Hannu, Juha Hannu and Mikko Tikkala have been driving rally before, but now they are keeping a break and concentrate more to background business.

There is also co-driver in a rally car. Today we have the following co-drivers:

1. Tero Mäki (Marko Saarinen)
2. Jari Nuora (Rauli Leiviskä)
3. Jatta Eerola, Ari Hannu (Marko Järvenpää)

There has also to be the service team who takes care a car and drivers in races. They are also our development mechanics.

Marko Saarinen's car is Audi quattro S2 and Rauli Leiviskä's and Marko Järvenpää's cars are Wolkswagen Golf MK1. The first model of Golf is excellent car to drive rally. It is light (for example about 100 kilograms lighter than Golf 2 model), really easy to drive, technique is solid and the car is also easy to develop. We have been working a lot with drivability and gearbox, but also safety is really important to us.

Rauli Leiviskä and Marko Järvenpää concentrate mostly to Finnish F-Cup rally-series. The series is meant for a little bit older cars, but in these cars technique is modern. Races are really interesting and level of races is high. After you have driven F-Cup, you know what kind of driver you really are in Finland. Marko Saarinen has always been driving Finland's champion series and it is the highest level of rally in Finland.

We have a lot of sponsors. These companies are extremely important for us, because without them we couldn't drive these rallies. Please, use these companies! In our area they sponsor one very fine activity to younger people. If you want to be our sponsor, you will find our addresses from Feedback part.

Rally is very popular hobby in Finland. Lot of people wants to be a rally driver. We have long traditions of rallies and drivers. Timo Mäkinen, Ari Vatanen, Hannu Mikkola, Timo Salonen, Juha Kankkunen, Tommi Mäkinen and Marcus Grönholm are all familiar drivers to Finnish people. In Finland rally is as popular as football is in Germany and England.


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