Juha Rintanen - Possibly the best driver in D1GP?

Misfortune has been the word in describing the D1GP USA season 2008 for Juha Rintanen. For the first race, the newly built gearbox gave off and that was it for the starter of the season. In second race, we had managed to found a R154 gearbox for the race car, but it was in used condition and was very slow to use. Finally, it gave up thus made Juha's driving impossible. He did beautiful job anyhow.

Things were looking better for the third race, with newly renewed gearbox, there was slight change to have some success! But the "misfortune" stroke again, and the lower nylon bushing of the gear leveler gave away, making the gear changing as accurate as mixing the porridge pot... Juha fought like a real knight, and managed to get in best 16. He was fighting against Nomuken when the Lady Misfortune decided to wave her whip one more time. Juha had to give Ken Nomura some huge lead, since Nomuken's Skyline was moving surprisingly slowly, and had just managed to catch up him when it happened... While changing to third gear, his hand slipped (!) and managed to find the main power switch, the Nissan died instantly. Normally, this kinds of things just do not happen except in books and stories, but it did happen to him...

For the last race, Juha got the gearbox fixed again and it indeed did work fine until; it broke down again. Here are some comments regarding his driving (the source is a popular Finnish drifting forum, Vastaheitto.com)

First in Finnish, then my translation:

Jenkeistä kuului sen verran tietoa Juhasta, koko viikonlopun kovin entry nopeus ja koko radan luisukulma keskiarvo. Vielä kuin pystyis ajaa ehjän viikonlopun ilman hajoamisia.

Translation:
"News from USA: Juha had the fastest entry speed in the whole weekend, and his average drifting angle was also rated as the largest one."


Reply to the previous comment:

itse asiassa se oli vielä parempi. yksi juzzin ajoista oli koko kauden toiseksi parhaat pisteet kaikista harjoittelu ajoista ja kisavedoista.

Translation:
As a matter of fact, his driving was even better. One of his pulls was scored second best for the whole season. Including all the practice and race pulls.


Here is a compilation by JT Media of Juha's driving. Enjoy! :)