More than 4,000 workers prepare Finland’s rally weekend

More than 4,000 people from different fields are working to make Finland’s World Rally Championship weekend run smoothly, Yle reports.

Among them is Enni Kurki from Laukaa, whose kiosk beside the Laukaa special stage has made for an intense stretch of work. The stage was run on Friday morning and again in the afternoon, while preparations began on Thursday evening when the tent and most of the equipment were brought to the site.

Kurki says rally spectators are grateful customers. The best-selling items are predictable: sausages, coffee and tea for English visitors.

This is the sixth consecutive rally in which Kurki has run the kiosk. This year, her work also included preparing food for the volunteers who built the special stage. About 80 people worked on the construction each day.

A seven-hectare parking area

Several parking areas for rally visitors have been set up near the Laukaa stage. One of them, parking area P3, is located on a field owned by Tuomo Häkkinen.

Häkkinen works as a security steward at the site with a team of 10. The seven-hectare field can accommodate about 1,500 cars, according to his estimate. It opened as an overnight parking area on Thursday.

Häkkinen says visitors in the overnight parking area celebrate into the early hours, but there have been no major disturbances.

Weather has caused problems with parking arrangements in previous years. Last year, five cars had to be towed away after a thunderstorm softened the ground. The year before, about 20 cars were removed.

Hundreds of thousands of visits

The organiser of Secto Rally Finland, AKK Sports, reports the total number of “spectator experiences” across the event’s different areas. Last year, the figure was about 267,000.

The service park at Lutakonaukio square in Jyväskylä received 64,000 visitors last year. The Harju special stage, which runs through central Jyväskylä, drew 27,500 spectators aged over 12.