Winning a title in motorsport is hard enough - but after recovering from cancer is a different challenge altogether. 📝 TommyHoward spoke to WRC2-winning co-driver Reeta Hamalainen, as she begins her title defence with driver Emil Lindholm his weekend:
Starting the defence of a World Rally Championship title, let alone winning the 2022 WRC2 co-drivers crown, are days that Reeta Hamalainen thought may never arrive. That’s not through a lack of skill or opportunity, but something far more sobering. She has overcome one of the biggest hurdles one can face in life to become the first woman to win a WRC2 title – cancer.
Three months on from that history-making feat, the smile remains on the 34-year-old’s face when reminded by Autosport in Sweden that she is the reigning WRC2 co-drivers’ world champion. If winning the 2022 title was a challenge then defending it is likely to be an even tougher prospect with WRC2’s recent influx of talent from the top division, including former Hyundai driver Oliver Solberg and M-Sport duo Adrien Fourmaux and Gus Greensmith added to the mix.
Reaching the WRC2 summit last year has incredibly been achieved in only the second season with former GT racer Lindholm - a driver she has known since 2012. But their partnership soon bore fruit and, thanks to Hamalainen’s distinctive melodic style of pacenote delivery in crisp Finnish, it has become an internet sensation. Fully aware of her style, even she acknowledges it's “intense”.
Hamalainen managed to contest a rally in Finland while undergoing treatment in 2019, such was her determination to succeed, before the light at the end of the tunnel emerged through a successful breast cancer surgery. A reunion with Tuohino for a proper comeback after the COVID-19 interrupted 2020 season arrived in a top-level Ford Fiesta WRC car at Arctic Rally Finland. Sadly, this ended all too soon as Tuohino was forced to retire from the final day of the snow rally through injury.
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