Round 4 of the V8 Thunder Finnish Championship series was driven at Alastaro Circuit on 3rd and 4th of September. Milla Mäkelä had a firm grip to the second place in the points ahead of the weekend while the reigning champion Toni Lähteenmäki had the chance to seal the title if he wins both races of the weekend.
On Saturday Milla had minor issues with traffic in the qualifying on the flying laps. She was still able to put herself in P3 on the grid for race 1, but the start itself wasn’t too good.
“I was quite satisfied with P3 starting position, but then I just got a bad start and there was a lot going on around me in the first few corners. Luckily I avoided any collisions and made my way back up to third. From then on the race was a bit boring really. Some rain caused the front pack to spread out a bit before a safety car was deployed. When the safety car ended I got a try to snatch P2, but it didn’t work out this time.” Milla recaps her race which she finished on the third step of the podium.
Second fastest lap time of the race however meant that she had a front row start for Race 2 on Sunday. And that race was everything but boring. Milla had a great start and was side by side with Lähteenmäki for half a lap before Milla finally got the lead. She was controlling the pace and felt confident that she is going to bring this win home. Even a safety car restart wasn’t an issue, but then with about 6 minutes left of the 20 minute race the unexpected happened.
The oil cooler of the last car broke down and two corners were covered in oil. Milla was the first car to hit those two corners and she spinned out in the fastest corner of the track. The race was immediately red flagged to clean the track. However after the track was cleaned Milla got a permission to restart the race from P1 as she was leading the race the last time they crossed the finish line.
“Milla had sever issues preparing her tires on the warm up laps as there was so much sand on top of the front splitter that when she got heat into the tires there was also sand immediately stuck to them. The restart was certainly not easy after waiting for over an hour for the track to be cleaned, but also the sand made it even more difficult for her.” says Milla’s race engineer brother Miikka Mäkelä.
Toni Lähteenmäki was able to pass Milla on the first lap after the restart and Milla had a hard time keeping Petri Ortju behind her with only a couple of laps of the race remaining. The bad luck continued when Ortju hit the back of Millas car in a braking zone and Milla spinned. She dropped down to P3 and the safety car was deployed for the third time as Ortju had to retire his car after the crash. The race was finished behind the safety car.
“I’m pretty sure I’ve never had such a roller coaster of emotions during one race! I was prepared to fight for the win today and our whole team made great effort to make that happen. Luck just wasn’t on our side this time. I would have loved to challenge Toni again for the win with clean tires, but the safety car stayed on track until the race was finished.” Milla says.
The race on Sunday showed that Milla has the speed to win. Also the fastest lap time of the race proves that. With two more races to go at Ahvenisto on 17th and 18th September Milla has already secured a medal of the Finnish Championship series for a second year in a row. Theoretically it is still possible that it could be bronze again, but a 44 points gap to P3 is pretty convincing when there’s a maximum of 50 points to be awarded from the last 2 races.
“We are confident that if we can perform on our current level we will bring home a win from Ahvenisto. Of course we need to focus on getting everything done the best way we can and then just hope that we would have at least some luck this time. Then the medal would also be one step brighter than last year for sure.” team manager dad Markku Mäkelä ends.
Pictures by Pertti Kangasniemi