The Press Rally is a weekend-long rally held in the Baltic States in late May, most often in Lithuania in recent years. Organized by the Lithuanian Journalist Auto Club (Lietuvos žurnalistų autoklubas), it comprises 15 autoslalom (or, autocross as you probably call it) stages around the country, from test centers to arena parking lots, runways, and industrial areas.
In Lithuania, it’s a significant and popular event, bringing in competition drivers and media people alike, as it was originally designed around auto writers but has expanded to bring in rally drivers and autoslalom experts as well. In its 30-year history, the rally has been held in Estonia and Latvia as well, but in recent years it’s become simply “Press Rally” instead of the Baltic Press Rally, and it now starts and finishes in Lithuania. The cars that take part are traditionally hot stuff such as BRZs, MR2s, Porsches, GTIs, tuned BMW compacts; the kind of cars that can both negotiate cones well and get to the other end of the straight quickly.
Registration opens in the spring, and the slots usually fill up rapidly. For the press class, it costs 350 eur ($400) to take part and for the sport class, 770 euros ($900). These are further divided into more classes by engine size (taking forced induction into account), or whether you’re taking an EV or a “Classic” specification car: earlier, the Classic class was more voluntary and deemed for people just wanting to take their old car out, but for the last couple years, all cars over 30 years old have been treated as Classic.
On top of the registration fees, you pay local competition insurance and license fees for a couple days. Road cars with valid roadworthiness inspection are accepted, as you need to transit from stage to another in regular traffic, and it can take an hour of driving or more to get there.
You Don’t Have To Bring a Shitbox, But You Can
I’ve done the rally three times in previous years, between 2017 and 2019. I am a member of the Finnish automotive journalists’ association and the call often comes from the Baltics to invite Finns in the event.
In 2017, I had just gotten my 1986 Volkswagen Polo running quite nicely, so I chose to take that as it had fresh inspection. With my autowriter friend Henri co-driving, we finished the rally and didn’t end up in last place despite working with just 54 carbed horsepower.
I was instantly hooked and brought my Peugeot 205 XS the next year. The 2018 rally, which took us to Latvia and some airport runways, went similarly well, and in 2019 I took the Slovenian and slovenly Fiat Panda I had driven up from the Balkans.
The premise was ridiculous – what does a tiny 45-horsepower car do amongst Porsches – but we weren’t the last, far from it, as we finished at 19th place out of 26 cars. It simply shows how well you can do if you avoid penalties from missing cones and just wring the last available horsepower from whatever you brought.
In photos taken at various handling courses, the teal Panda looks like it’s inches away from tipping over and a Lithuanian driver said they were taking bets on how far it would make it before falling on its side. It never did, despite all the wheels pointing in different directions during spirited driving.
I drove the Panda home and went for a successful job interview with the car still liveried up with sponsorship stickers.
We Have To Go Back
Fast forward seven years: I’m in another office job and happily over 40, with a kid. I’ve been following the occasional Press Rally updates but haven’t really been able to spare the time to do the rally again. The will to do it has been there, but you know, life happens. This year, there was a chance to come back.
A good friend, Eetu, who writes for the Moottori magazine of the Automobile and Touring Club of Finland, said he was going to do it again. He did the Press Rally the first time last year in a Peugeot 306 GTI-6 he bought from Henri, my former co-driver, and had a great time (even if not in the final standings). He would bring his cousin to the rally and suggested I take part, too. Henri was unavailable this year, as was a Lincoln-driving writer from Maaseudun Tulevaisuus, an agricultural newspaper, but my brother had the weekend free and could do it.
The Weapon Of Choice
Out of all possible cars, I chose my winter daily driver: the trusty blue Corolla 4WD wagon that’s not yet over 30 years old, unlike my other hobby cars. It still had a little over a month of valid inspection left and seemed to be in decent enough nick for a rally: not perfect, but largely reliable. I’ve had it for a couple years now and it always seems to have something to fix up, as it’s gone through several rear wheel bearings and needed new brake lines and a bit of welding to pass inspection, but it’s never failed to start and it doesn’t leak any fluids – the two things you really need on a long rally.
After the winter, the CEL lit up due to a hole in the exhaust just before the oxygen sensor. I drove the car down to Helsinki for some repairs: as well as the CEL, it soon had the ABS light stay on. Using a jump wire on the diagnostics port, my brother correctly tracked it down to the driver side rear ABS sensor, which had already been replaced due to an exploding wheel bearing taking it out. With a new sensor, an oil change and a set of Toyo Proxes tires on the Mini Cooper pepper pot wheels, the Corolla was ready for a fight.
As it’s a 2000 model, the wagon is one of the last 4WD Corollas sold new in Europe. It’s the facelift version of the European market E110 Corolla, making it an AE115L to be precise, and it corresponds to the Japanese market Sprinter Carib as you can see from the rear section. It has the 110-horsepower, non-VVT-i 7A-FE engine while the E110 would otherwise introduce VVT-i ZZ engines at facelift, and to my recollection this is the only European version with the 1.8 7A-FE which was more often seen in USDM Corollas and Prizms.
It has Toyota’s Full-Time 4WD, which means it gives as much as 50% power to the rear axle via a viscous coupling. In the winter, I can get it immediately sideways and my groceries evenly distributed around the cargo area. It’s no hot hatch, but the E110 never got a really hot version here anyway. The homologation spec G6R still made do with a 110-horsepower 4A-FE 1.6-liter, and we didn’t get a turbo 7A-FE like Australia did.
To Finish First, First You Have To Get There
With our helmets packed and the Corolla freshly serviced, we set out towards Estonia on a cargo ferry on Wednesday afternoon. Driving down to the starting line would take seven hours, so we chose to take it easy at first and stay overnight in the beach town of Pärnu.
The other Finnish team took an early Thursday morning ferry from Helsinki and we met up in Pärnu before noon, kicking tires and packing the cars with snacks and water.
The five-hour drive down was uneventful, and we made it to Molėtai, Lithuania in time for final registrations and a demo drive around the cone course next to the hotel. Handed a lapful of sponsorship stickers, we washed the cars, and applied the livery according to specifications given in the rally’s official WhatsApp group. Our cars, helmets and documents were also checked by an official. Our sub-2000cc press class mostly consisted of press Renaults and Toyotas, a Dacia Sandero Stepway that was marked to have a 1000cc engine, a BRZ. and a dog-eared Peugeot 206 RC with the range-topping 177hp engine.
Since we had time, we also put on our helmets and went to do a lap of the demo course. I’m glad we did. It went terribly.
Driving against the setting sun, with the course map rotating on my brother’s phone, we got nowhere. With a bunch of cones missed and generally a very slow pace, I simply said “Let’s not repeat that tomorrow” and went to bed with my mind racing about how we could make it work. My brother had zero experience as a co-driver and the physical road book could not arrive sooner.
As the road books were handed out from 7AM for an 8:30 start, I got our copy the first thing in the morning. Over sumptuous hotel breakfast (and the first cup of coffee the machine brewed out) we scribbled it full of notations about cone directions and key phrases to get it right and soon headed for the official starting line at the town center.
The main street was lined with stickered cars and the clock ticked for our own start at 8:40, as the press class under 2000cc was sent out first. We stopped at the starting line, waved at the assembled crowd and headed to the first stage, the same lot as the previous evening, with my heart racing.
The Rally Starts
The first course was done twice. In the first run, we took last place, but as we didn’t miss any cones we left seven cars out of 83 behind us as they were saddled with penalties.
After the second go, there were still five cars behind us, including the Finnish Peugeot team and a C63 AMG, plus we narrowly beat the turbo Starion from the Classic class.
Hitting a cone nets you a five-second penalty, but missing a cone gives you the slowest recorded time in the class plus 30 seconds. This means a fast car driven wrong can get a really bad time, but a slow car driven wrong can be carried by a slightly less slow car driven right.
It probably also means why old cars are put in the Classic class, but the Starion for example was driven hard throughout the event and no Classic class car simply cruised through the rally.
The successful two stints set us on the right track. I was beaming as we drove to special stage 2, a karting track in Anykščiai, an hour away through Lithuanian back roads. I love the scenery there, all rolling hills and picturesque small towns, which we hoped not to disturb even if we were in a rush.
The route 119 also included some deep dips and a place a Lithuanian driver called “The old lady’s jump”. The asphalt there was scored in the spot where vehicles would land.
SS2 also showed us our place. We didn’t make any mistakes, but we were still slow. SS3, a backyard slalom also in Anykščiai was far, far better: again no mistakes, and placing at 62nd out of 83 for the first stint and 74th for the second.
After that it was back to the karting track whose layout was slightly changed for SS4. The Sandero Stepway was only a couple seconds ahead of us, but it was still ahead.
The Corolla drove fine and didn’t scrape its wheels on the arches, nor did it chew up the outer edges of its tires. It corners quite level (“Corolla Activa”, said Eetu) and the 4WD surely distributes power to the rear even in asphalt driving.
Earlier, we had lunch at the karting track and looked at the other classes battling it out on the course, talking to all the teams I remembered from previous years. My brother’s project car is a banana yellow SW20 MR2, so he was happy to chat with the three teams with third-generation MR2s.
One of them had a Honda K24 swapped in, which explains why it was marked as a 2400cc car in the listings. The really friendly guys also said they were constantly browsing Finnish Nettiauto classified ads, which really made me feel welcome amongst my peers.
After an hour-long transit to Panevėžys and a handling track there, the first day ended at the Kuršėnai autodrome after eight special stages.
Despite a good effort in Panevėžys, we made a cone mistake there on both rounds: in the final corners, there were two cones so far infield that we just didn’t see them–but neither did the Peugeot team. Guess we should have drawn some more lines and arrows in the map book.
The long straights at Kuršėnai also showed that the 110-hp, 3000-lb Corolla just wasn’t fast enough to keep up with the 167-hp 306 and the lighter and clearly faster Sandero Stepway, but at first we were only fractions of a second slower than the brand new Clios. One of them made a mistake that ended up granting them our time with the 30 second penalty on top, despite having improved their speed.
We were also close to the Volvo 240’s initial time, which probably meant the Corolla turned better; on the second try the Volvo team improved hugely and left us far behind. Despite the penalties from stages five and six, we ended the day on a high: especially because the Peugeot team had gotten a timecard penalty, leaving them two and a half minutes behind us. Eetu quoted the Finnish rally driver Tommi Mäkinen, “Peli on selvä,” the end result was clear.
Still, we entered the second day with the idea that we’d defend our position from the much faster Peugeot with a nearly 60-hp advantage. Or so we thought.
Day 2 – Saturday
The second day started with breakfast and the discovery of a near-grave mistake. “Where’s the road book? I’ll check the notations over breakfast.” “It’s in the car, in the passenger door.”
Reader, it wasn’t in the car.
I remember having seen it at the reception counter upon arrival.
Our options were: finding it, getting another, or copying some other team’s book. As my brother talked to the “Honda” MR2 crew and took photos of their book, I messaged the Peugeot team that we’d lost the road book.
“Uh, we have it. The 206 guys found it at the reception and asked us if it had notes scrawled on it in Finnish. We figured we’d hold onto it until you noticed.”
“Well, that’s good.”
With that cleared up, we also found out that an early wake-up was for nothing: the starting grid was now arranged with the fastest car going out first, meaning we were bumped to a 10:40 start with our position. That didn’t matter, at least we had time to set everything up properly and empty the car. I asked the Dacia Sandero guys whether their car was turbocharged. I got the answer “The turbo … it’s in the mind, you know” and some McMahon meme stickers.
After our time came up, we started off towards the parking lot of the Svyturio Arena in Klaipeda. In our Press Rally history, this is a magical and cursed place, as there has historically always been something going wrong, including a mistake in an earlier road book that had the wrong number of parking lot rows printed in it. This year the book had an aerial photo to make sure the rows were correct, but as a basketball court had been located there after the book was printed, the starting line was moved and we had to alter our notes. Always something.
Call The Tow Truck – But Not For Us
And that wasn’t even the half of it. After a successful first stint with no mistakes, I geared up for the second run. As I glanced at the rear view mirror, I saw the Peugeot guys pushing the 306. It had broken down! We rushed through our second stint, hitting the rev limiter in first, and ran to help them. “It died on us and won’t stay running. Probably a fault with the relays. Can you help us push it?”
To stay in the race ourselves, we ended having to abandon the other Finnish team and hoped they would get a tow, as a towing company was one of the sponsors and their number was pasted in the WhatsApp group. We stormed to the next stage a little late, only to find out the coordinates directed us to the finish and not the starting line. We made it there just in time!
And the stage didn’t go well. Near the end, we had to stop the car due to confusion with the cones: my brother thought we had to slalom through ones I remembered we’d need to pass from the right. We passed the finish line with a useless time, with the timekeeper saying “Hey, it’s better this way.” Another agreed and asked if I wanted to sell the car to him.
They were right, the Sandero had been hauling ass and they effectively carried us with their fine time, even with the 30 second penalty on top. Plenty of crews made mistakes and while we would be last in class, with the Sandero hard to catch, the Peugeot team’s unfortunate breakdown also meant we didn’t really have a good duel going anymore.
The mission changed: we now needed to finish, no matter if we were last, but we would complete all the stages without penalties and take the last place with honor. We also couldn’t kill our car, as both our team and the Finnish Peugeot team needed to get home on Monday.
Closest To Russia I’ve Been In Ages
The last stages would take place on the Curonian Spit. This is a blade shaped land formation on the Baltic Sea with its southern end in Russian Kaliningrad. The Lithuanian end is accessed by ferry. We drove onto the ferry with the Sandero crew, and eventually got a look at their papers. The goddamn car was turbocharged after all, with more power than the Corolla out of a 1.2 TCe engine instead of a one-liter. With 120 horsepower, we’re not talking about huge power figures, but it weighed hundreds of pounds less than our car, with better torque characteristics. No wonder even the 306 GTI-6 had had trouble catching up to it.
Over rooftop lunch with the Sandero team, I told them “The Peugeot guys are out of the race. You’re our buddies now” and bought the driver a cup of coffee. “You know, you can pay me back by slowing down. 50 cents is 50 seconds, right.”
“I’ll rather buy you a beer at the after party!”
The penultimate stages were at the Nida airport runway. It was another course with long straights, and we made up for the lack of power with a lack of mistakes. A bunch of the faster cars, Supras and Evos, mowed down cones and lamented.
As I prepared for the second run, we were soon told to get the hell out of there as planes would be landing on the runway. It’s likely that the day had been so long that the event’s permit had ran out, so we were assured we’d get “some time” and directed to the finishing stage. I know the course was marked to have a flying finish, but this was a bit much.
Finally, The Finish
The last two stages were on a long downhill street in Nida, flanked by forest, and we gave it hell. We couldn’t catch the Sandero despite our best efforts, but we also didn’t get penalties other than ten seconds for hitting cones on one of the runs. In the overall results for the entire rally, the Sandero team beat us by two minutes and 22 seconds, with a VW ID.3 from the EV class between us with a marginally slower time than the Sandero.
Interestingly, a Mercedes SL63 AMG simply didn’t do the last two stages despite showing up, which meant it was dropped behind us in the overall results, along with a press Renault Clio that had to head home the first day. I think that finishing 80th out of 83 teams means we weren’t the last, even if we were the slowest ones in fully completed results. And genuinely, the most important thing is we did it all, with intent, and got through it all to the finish.
“Now, let’s get some beer”, the Sandero guys told us. We went for a supermarket run and walked around the harbour in Nida. After a while I figured we should probably get going for the ferry to the mainland. “If we leave now, we’ll make it to the 7:40 one. The next one leaves 40 minutes later, that’s a bit late.”
We set off on the hourlong road to the ferry and got stuck behind a Chrysler Pacifica, which we passed only to just make the earlier ferry with a minute to spare. It seems you have to keep making good time even after the rally has finished.
Back at the accommodation, the party soon started at the poolside. Plenty of awards were handed out, including a consolation prize for the Peugeot crew. It was a great evening talking to people I knew from past rallies and meeting new ones.
Our class was won by Domantas Puodžiukas with Justas Lengvinas co-driving, in a Subaru BRZ: the Peugeot 206 RC team with Egidijus Babelis and Saulius Masonas took second place with just seconds to differentiate them from the BRZ.
The fastest in any Press class were Renaldas Gabartas and Vincas Gerdžiūnas in their Audi RS3 (Press over 4000cc), with overall victory going to the Porsche 911 team (above) of Vytas Bilinskas and Vytis Šliažas, in the Sport over 4000cc class.
Charging Towards Home
The next morning, the long haul home started. The Peugeot guys disassembled the gauge cluster to try to find out if it was a dead alternator warning light bulb failing to trigger the alternator (it wasn’t) and devised a plan: they’d set off with the Toyota’s full battery and the Toyota’s alternator would charge the half full they had bought from Klaipeda to get them to the accommodation, since the batteries were all the same size.
We’d then keep swapping batteries to make it all the way to Helsinki, rotating the three ones we had between two cars.
This was a huge faff, but it paid off. The Peugeot would usually make it an hour and a half until dying, by which point a full battery would be swapped in. This also reset the Corolla’s oxygen sensor CEL for a couple hours, which was nice.
We also figured out the Corolla would still start happily with a battery that was too drained for the Peugeot, so all was well, even if we eventually navigated onto an endless gravel road that filled everything with dust and shook the cars apart.
As we approached old Jelgava near Riga, Latvia, Eetu messaged us: “The exhaust is breaking up. Satan of satans.”
The muffler soon came off the Peugeot and we transported it in the Corolla. After yet another two battery swaps we made it back to Pärnu and watched some of the gold medal hockey game over plentiful dinner. Finland beat Switzerland and became ice hockey world champions, so our own teams weren’t the only ones that did well that day.
I changed the ferry booking to be able to assist the Peugeot guys all the way to Tallinn, and we first navigated to the wrong harbour as I didn’t realize the other ferry would leave from another harbour, not from the one for cargo ships, despite being the same company. Not to worry, we made it to the right one with plenty of time to spare and we even took the Laagna highway that was used to film the Tenet movie scenes with the cars driving backwards.
After the ferry ride, we swapped batteries one last time under an overpass in Helsinki, and parted ways. The Peugeot guys left the 306 at the magazine’s garage and got into a press car … which was a Skoda EV they had to stop to charge.
We drove our final 500km stint up north and made it home Monday evening, in the Corolla and my leased Mitsubishi. It was a great trip, with the Corolla performing superbly, and assisting the other Finns when they most needed it. And in the end, I was happy I got to do the trip with my brother. We haven’t done anything like this in ages, and it felt like time well spent. While the rally from Molėtai to Nida was 600km, it was over 2800 km (1800 miles) for us to get there, do the rally, and drive back.
Soon, the Press Rally organizers confirmed that next year’s event would also be driven on the Curonian Spit with stages in Nida. I’m already thinking what to bring.
(Photos by Press Rally and author)
That sounds great. Would love to do such an event!
“I drove the Panda home and went for a successful job interview with the car still liveried up with sponsorship stickers.”
That was undoubtedly my favourite part 🙂