Lauri Joona and Janni Huss had to drive in the Central European World Rally Championship at the end of October.
At the beginning of October, we heard interesting rally news. The Finnish driver who won the WRC3 class championship of the World Series last year Lauri Joona26, announced that his driving partner next year in the WRC2 class will be Janni Hussi.
Hussi, 32, who previously became known as a fitness athlete and especially as a media personality from various TV and radio programs, jumped into map reading only last year, when he made his debut at the Historic Rally in Lahti Sami Pajarin as a carter.
Hussi has described that “it all started as a joke at my job as a morning radio host”.
The new career quickly took off, because this season Hussi has worked as a former F1 driver Heikki Kovalainen as a karter in the SM series. He was Joona’s karter in a couple of EC rallies.
In the coming season, Joona and Hussi will drive a full World Series in the WRC2 class, i.e. at least seven races. Karttur’s job already becomes Huss’s main job.
Read more: Media personality Janni Huss’s bold defection: Next season as a map reader in World Cup rallies – “It all started as a joke as a morning radio host”
However, the cooperation suffered a nasty setback. Huss and Joona were supposed to participate in the Central European World Cup Rally at the end of October.
This week, the duo’s test runs on the asphalt roads of Spain ended with a decent outing.
– Greetings from Spain. We’ve been driving an asphalt test here for a couple of days on nice tracks. As you can see from the second picture, we started looking for borders, found them and even went a little over. This is the rally sometimes, but we don’t get discouraged, Hussi wrote on Instagram.
The outing had such significant consequences that the duo’s joint debut in the World Series will be postponed to next year. Lauri Joona injured his back while driving out.
– In the Spanish tests, there was a crash due to a small driving error. There was so much bad luck on the way that my own back took a jolt in the event. We are still in Spain and we are investigating possible further measures. However, everything is fine with us, Joona updated the situation.
– Of course, when the pace increases all the time, the chances for mistakes increase and that is part of the sport. The aim is to push the limits in the tests and to reach the finish line as quickly as possible in the competitions. Since our main focus is next season, we don’t want to risk preparing for it. So we won’t be driving in Central Europe next week.