Sorry I haven’t blogged for a while, but I’ve been in the bush at home in Zimbabwe – where there’s not much broadband to be had!

I arrived home a holiday in Brisbane after Rally GB. The end of the year seemed to be pretty busy in the end, with Catalunya and the final round in Wales coming pretty close together, there wasn’t much time to relax. There was time for that in Australia. It was a good break

After that, I headed home to Zim. The weather here is really starting to heat up now. It’s been 40 degrees with some scorching sunshine. When it’s as hot as that, it makes training really hard work outside.

As well as working on my fitness, I’ve also been working on the programme for next season. There’s nothing to say yet, but the time is coming. I have some more meetings next week and I should be able to share some news with you then. Take a look at the news section on the website this time next week and all should be revealed.

In the meantime, I’ve just been keeping up with the news in the championship – and the most exciting thing we’ve heard is that Kimi Raikkonen could be coming. This really would be fantastic news for the championship and for the profile of the sport. We all saw the impact Kimi had on the World Rally Championship when he contested Rally Finland last year – it was incredible.

So, here’s hoping for another Finn in a rally car next season!

Talk to you soon.

How fantastic to be back in mid-Wales. I lived near Aberystwyth for a while and had a good time there, so I’m always pleased to come back. Having said that, we stayed in Llanidloes last night (so we can be much closer to the stages on the recce) and it’s fair to say, not much goes on there.

I know the area pretty well and a few of the stages. Obviously it’s been a while since we were on those roads in good conditions – unlike the snow and ice of last year – so doing the recce in Hafren, Sweet Lamb and Myherin was great. Sweet Lamb in particular is going to be a really good stage – there are so many spectating opportunities in the place, it’ll be rocking when we get there on Friday!

Just when we were starting to think the Indian summer might last a little bit longer, the weather reminded us we were in Wales; the rain arrived at lunchtime on Tuesday. And it poured down. And the mist came down. It was pretty miserable. In those kind of conditions you really have to focus on the notes. If the fog and the mist is around, the notes are even more important than ever – they can guide you perfectly.

One of the sections of stages I really enjoyed was the start of Myherin. The start is really wide with a series of hairpins, built for the massive trucks to take the wind turbines up to the top of the hill. Anyway, these corners are so wide, you don’t need the handbrake – we’ll just be chucking the C4 at the apex with a big Scandinavian flick and a load of second-gear throttle. It’s going to be fantastic – I can’t wait!

I went karting with some mates last night. I’d forgotten how much fun it is. The race, at Milton Keynes, went on for 40 minutes or something like that. It was hard work, but really good for the arms. I haven’t raced for ages, so it took me a while to get back into the swing of overtaking people – but not long!

The track out at Milton Keynes is a really good one – and the two-stroke karts were pretty quick as well. I know some of the [WRC] drivers did some karting before Spain and with the benefit of hindsight, I think this is quite a good plan. Any driving you can do before an event works well and with karting it certainly helps with the right lines and things like that. I think I’m going to do more of it.

There were about 20 karts in the race and you definitely get out of racing and the art of race craft. Luckily, most of it came back to me; I used a bit of kerb here, a touch of grass there and I was away. I know the Red Bull F1 team is based in Milton Keynes, maybe I should have popped along to talk about a career change... actually, no. I'm definitely a rally man.

And right now, that's all I'm thinking about: Wales and Rally GB. It’s getting closer and I really can’t wait – especially for those mid-Wales stages.

Australia is one of my favourite countries to visit – so as you can imagine, I’m pretty pleased to be here on the latest round of the World Rally Championship. I had a good look around Sydney when I arrived a few days ago, before moving up to Kingscliff for the start of the recce with the rest of the Citroen Junior Team.

Everybody used to talk about the loose gravel surface on Rally Australia, but never having competed on the Perth-based event, I couldn’t comment on that. From what I’ve seen on the recce, these roads are nothing like the ones this event used to use on the other side of the country. These roads are really wide and fast. They look great. It’s going to be tough to get the set-up right straight away, but it always is on a new event. But I’m really looking forward to getting going. The recce has been great – particularly now that my co-driver Dan [Barritt] and I are over the jetlag and not waking up in the middle of the night.

I couldn’t resist one last blog on the town of Jyvaskyla itself. What an amazing place. I know Finns and big on rallying and Rally Finland – or should I say the 1,000 Lakes – in particular, but it’s still three days before the start of the event and the atmosphere’s already amazing here.

I walked through the centre of town and spotted McDonald’s were selling the rally burger. I was tempted, but declined and headed for Subway for the healthy option. And tonight, we went to eat in a Mexican restaurant at the end of the main street – and there were only two tables not filled with rally people. I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like by the time the rally starts!

Wow. How fast is Finland! I just got back from a day-long test in the C4 WRC. It’s just fantastic. We did a fast stage this morning and then a tighter and twistier one in the afternoon. Between the two stages, we covered about 150 kilometers – in wet and dry conditions. All-in-all, it was pretty much the perfect test.

When you haven’t been down these roads for 12 months, you definitely forget just how quick they really are. We did some work on the set-up of the C4, specifically on the differential and the suspension, just to make sure we’ve got the handling absolutely spot-on for the start on Thursday night.

I’m feeling pretty good for this event. Dan [Barritt, co-driver] and I have had the chance to look at the in-car videos from last year – this is the first event we’ve been able to do this. That means we have been able to go through and make a couple of changes to the notes already, a bit like a pre-recce recce, but in a perfectly legal way!

Talking of the recce, that starts tomorrow. Last year, we were up and leaving the hotel at about five in the morning. This year it’s much more civilised – we’re not going until 0730. I’m very happy about that!

A family holiday in the Seychelles sounded like a pretty great way to spend the time between Poland and Finland. And it was. But I wasn’t convinced for the first couple of days.

Don’t get me wrong, the Seychelles was a beautiful place to go, but there just wasn’t much to do there. I went a bit stir crazy for the first couple of days, just until I got relaxed and into the holiday mood – then it was really cool.

We were at the south of the island, which is quite a quiet part – but we did some scuba diving and horse riding and things like that. The horse riding was good until my sister fell off and hurt herself. That meant we spent the last few days looking after her, which was a bit of a pain in itself!

But, by then I was already looking forward to Finland and my mind was wandering to top gear and doing big jumps in the Citroen again…

Went to see Mann Friday at Shepherd’s Bush Empire on Thursday night – they were fantastic. If you ever get a group of Zimbabweans together, you’re always in for a good time, and that’s just what we had on Thursday. Mann Friday are originally from back home, but they’re based in London now. I’ve followed their music for a while. It was a great gig and great to see quite a few of my mates that I haven’t caught up with in ages.

Co-drivers, as if I didn’t know it before, I truly do now. You are a very special breed. In fact, you’re all nuts. I’d always thought it, but now I know it for sure.

I discovered this in Finland last week. When I co-drove for Sebastien Loeb on a test near Jamsa, a couple of hours out of Helsinki. I say co-drove, actually, I just sat there and admired the view. Drivers usually make the worst passengers and I’m no different. I have to say, I was pretty apprehensive for the first couple of corners, but then you look at the bloke alongside you and think: “Hang on, this is the most successful rally driver in the whole of history...”

After that, I felt completely safe. It was an exceptional day and one where I learned quite a lot from Seb. It’s really useful to get back in the car again – even if it was without the steering wheel – because it gives you some idea of the speed of things in Finland. There’s fast and there’s Finland fast (and there’s there’s Sebastien Loeb Finland fast!). It really whetted my appetite to get back in the car and start driving again. I always get these feelings when I’ve been away from the Citroen C4 WRC for a while!

I had no idea just how cool the Goodwood Festival of Speed was. Having managed to go and see Wimbledon, I thought it time to move onto the next British summer sporting event in West Sussex. The rally cars were great, but it was the old stuff which really impressed me. I had no idea you could get so close to some truly legendary race and rally cars. I was pretty well blown away by that event.

It also turned out to be a bit of a social thing as well. I bumped into loads of people I hadn’t seen in ages. I saw Sebastien [Loeb] down there, but obviously it wasn’t that long since I saw him in Poland – but the likes of Kris Meeke and Justin Dale were there as well. It was really good to catch up with them.

As you can imagine, living in Wimbledon Village (where I share a flat with my sister) the last couple of weeks have been pretty hectic. Honestly, just popping out for a pint of milk has become a battle against the traffic. I was away for the last week in June and first week in July last year – so not much had prepared me for the invasion of tennis-maniacs.

I was more than happy to live with a few more thousand people in our backyard – particularly when so many of them were such good-looking women! There’s usually a pretty good ratio of good-looking girls around the place, but that went up 10-fold when the tennis started. Great! The other good thing was the buzz about town. The atmosphere was amazing while the tournament was on.

I was really glad that I was able to get some tickets to watch a couple of games – a great couple of games, too. After hanging out on Henman Hill we got in to see the womens’ semi-finals. We watched Venus and Serena win their semi-finals. They’re both pretty awesome and we were certainly cheering for them, but when they teamed up to play Cara Williams (one of Zim’s finest) and her doubles partner, we were not cheering for them. It didn’t really help. The Americans won the ladies’ doubles, leaving us quite glad we’d decided against wrapping ourselves up in the Zimbabwean flag!

The only possible downside to the tennis was the drinking, or at least the after effects. When I was young, I’d watched Wimbledon on television and thought it was all about strawberries and cream and drinking Robinsons’ barley water. Clearly, thinks have moved on. It’s all about Pimms and lemonade now. That’s a pretty special blend. It’s just like drinking pop. And then it’s not...

My Citroen Junior Team mate Sebastien Ogier and I shared a pedalo boat in the inaugural Rally Poland boat race today (Thursday). The race between all the manufacturer teams in the world championship was on the lake next to the service park in Mikolajki. I came away from the race knowing one thing: I need an engine! The race was pretty close until the Ford team pulled some fairly questionable tactics - getting a tow off a passing powerboat. Seb and I weren't helped by a steering problem in our craft, either.

Maybe next time we should try racing jet-skis or something like that - like I said, anything with an engine... 

I’m having a bit of an extreme week this week. After finishing fifth on the Acropolis Rally of Greece on Sunday – which, with temperatures of 40 degrees and roads littered with rocks the size of footballs to dodge or take your chances with, was pretty extreme in itself – I went  bungee jumping.

Some of the engineers from the Citroen Junior Team and [Sebastien] Ogier, another one of the drivers, went down and had a go at the jump off one of the bridges over the Corinth Canal. It was good. I’ve done a bungee before at home in Zimbabwe, but that one was a big higher. Having said that, when you’re standing looking down at nothing but fresh air, I reckon all of these bungees look pretty high up!

After the bungee, there was a bit of an impromptu Citroen Junior Team party – that was extreme in another way!

And then, with a bit of a hangover, it was back to London for some more training before the next event in Poland. That extreme theme continues today, though;  I’m going rock climbing tonight. There’s a bit of a twist, though, this is rock climbing in central London.

I’ll stick another blog up in the next couple of days to keep you posted on whether I’ve become an avid rock climber or not...

I went to the Corinth Canal for the first time today. It seemed like a pretty good idea, given that the service park is right alongside it. It's amazing! It's three kilometers long and 90 meters deep - it must have taken some digging! Halfway through the canal, there's a bungee jump off one of the bridges - I wouldn't have minded having a go, that would have kick-started the adrenalin before the first stage tomorrow. I don't think the team would have been too keen on me jumping off a bridge, though...

It was good to go out and see some history for once. It's easy to get a bit bogged down in the World Rally Championship; it can be really intensive: airport, recce, shakedown, rally, airport, home. We visit some awesome places over the course of the season and, when we're not travelling at 100mph, it's nice to be able to take in a bit of culture.

That's all the culture for now, though. From tomorrow morning it's pedal to the metal for me.

Talk to you soon.

Ciao,

Conrad.

Howzitgoing? How much snow was there in Norway? Incredible! I haven’t seen that much in a long time. And it was fantastic. It’s so much fun to drive in – and to snowboard in! I did some boarding before I went to the rally, which was really cool. The rally itself started pretty well, but then went south on Saturday when we had the wrong air-intake fitted on the car; the intake filled with snow and killed the engine. It was so frustrating having to get out of the car and clear the snow out, we dropped loads of time. After that, we pushed a little bit on some of the stages, but there was no point taking massive risks when our chance of the result had gone.

But what a feeling when it’s all going right! Pushing as hard as you can in these cars on roads which are difficult to even stand up on is just awesome. Snow is certainly one of the best surfaces to drive on.

Now, though, it’s a case of going from ski to surf; mountain to beach. We’re off to Cyprus next. I’ll talk to you from there.
Ciao.

Hello from the snow! I don’t think I have ever seen as much of the stuff as we’ve got here in Norway. I did a test late last week and the car ran really well – check out the news section for more details. After that, a few of us went and did some boarding an hour or so north of Hamar.

The snow was unreal. I put my board down and it sank like half a meter into the powder. It was impossible to see where the piste was, it was up to my knees all of the time. It was just a big free –for-all down the mountain, watching out for the trees as we went.

You couldn’t actually board or ski for too long, though. The cold was incredible. It’s bad enough when the regular temperature is minus 30, but once you start racing down the slope and get a bit of wind chill going, then it starts to get seriously chilly!
That’s enough snowboarding. Back to the rally!

Rally Ireland was looking really good on Saturday morning. We left Sligo in fifth place and I was determined not to let that result slip. But you just couldn’t believe the conditions. We came over a crest on the first stage and the river had burst its banks. The road had become part of the river. Incredible. We car swapped ends and we were heading backwards down the road with the car still in fifth gear.

We went backwards for about 100 metres. I thought we might be okay, but then we dropped into a ditch and couldn’t get out. I was really fed-up. Okay, we got back and made points for the team the next day, but it could have been better. Nevermind, Norway next and I’ve got a test and some skiing planned before that. I’ll let you know how I get on in a few days…