The Brains of a Racy Operation

By Matthew Fox

When she’s not working in U of C Vice-President (capital planning and development) Bob Ellard’s office, Leanne Junnila, BA’04, is often zipping along backroads at breakneck speeds in a 1996 Volkswagen Golf that sprays mud and gravel on hairpin turns. The 27-year-old is co-driver for Kamunen Racing and leads the class of Group 2 cars in the 2008 Canadian Rally Championship, a six-race series sanctioned by the Canadian Association of Rallysport (CAR) and broadcast on TSN.

With two races left in the season, Junnila and driver Eric Grochowski are looking to add to their lead. Up next is the Rallye Defi Ste.-Agathe in Quebec’s Laurentian region in early September.

CAR races take place across the country, in all seasons and primarily over backroads and logging roads with snow, ice, mud and dry gravel surfaces. Junnila says most events cover about 400 kilometres; 150 to 200 kilometres on backroads, and a similar distance on public roads (at posted speed limits) to link the backroad stages.

Group 2 cars like Kamunen’s Golf can have unlimited modifications, but they must remain two-wheel drive and they can’t be turbocharged.

To prepare for a race, Junnila writes pace notes during a route reconnaissance and makes calculations to ensure the car completes each section within an allotted time. Once the chase is on and she’s strapped into the right-hand seat, Junnila reads her notes back to Grochowski.

“I navigate at a pace that lets him see as far down the road as possible without giving him so much information that he forgets what I said,” Junnila says. “There’s a joke in rallying that describes the driver as the foot and the navigator as the brain.”

Junnila’s BA in psychology comes in handy. “It helps to have a good working relationship with your driver,” she says. “It’s like a marital relationship and if they’re not in the right head space to drive successfully at an event, you need to figure out why and you need to inspire them.”

As a young girl, Junnila was interested in extreme sports, inspired by an uncle who exposed her to snowmobiling, rock climbing, caving and windsurfing. In 2000, as the proud owner of a nimble Honda del Sol, Junnila contacted the Calgary Sports Car Club and was introduced to entry-level racing that didn’t require modifications to the cars. Soon after, she met Grochowski who suggested she attend the Thunderbird Rally in Merritt, B.C. Junnila was hooked.

Thousands of gut-churning kilometres later, Junnila hasn’t yet been in a serious accident. “In rally there are those who have rolled, and those who will roll. After seven years, I’m still in the ‘those who will roll category.’ We’ve been very fortunate.”

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Ed. note: Leanne provided this update following Kamunen's most recent race in Quebec in the 2008 Canadian Rally championship series.

The weather started out great. Thursday was reconnaissance day, which went smoothly - we polished up our notes from the previous year and added three new stages.

Friday was the first day of the event, which also went smoothly. It was warm and dry, and we ran some very competitive times. Friday night it rained and became quite humid, which continued all through Saturday.

First thing on Saturday morning when we went to start the car, we realized the starter had died spontaneously, so we push-started the car and drove out for the first stage of the day. On the transit stage, the car started overheating as the fan was intermittently working (also a strange sudden development). In a frantic rush to get the engine temp down before the start of the first stage, we forgot to close the hood pins and began the day with the hood flipping back smashing the windshield 100 metres down the road. We dropped 50 seconds fastening the hood back down and continued on.

At the first service, we borrowed a starter from the only other VW team at the event (we hadn't brought a spare), and after narrowly completing the swap within the alotted service time (15 seconds to spare), we realized the starter we borrowed was also dead and we had to push-start the car again to get the car out of service, barely in time to avoid late penalties.

We continued push-starting the car for the rest of the day, swapped out the fan relay to fix the overheating issues, and drove conservatively to ensure the car would finish the event without any more problems. On the second last stage of the event, the fuel pump died and after re-wiring the pump on the side of the road, there was nothing we could do. It was the end of our day. It was a very rough event, and out of the 43 cars entered, only 17 finished - an unusually low number.

I think the severe humidity may have affected our car, resulting in the "ghost in the machine" electrical issues, and the rough roads eventually shook the fuel pump to death. Some of the rocky sections had such large boulders that the sweep truck had to put his truck in 4WD to get through. It's the roughest event in Canada, by a significant margin, which is why it would have been great to achieve a finish this year, but the big picture still looks good - we're still winning Group 2 nationally, and we got further than any other Group 2 cars at the event, so they actually gave us the trophies anyways.

No points, but at least some recognition that we came very close. We have some electrical work to do in preparation for the next event, the Pacific Forest Rally in B.C. in October, but we're still in an excellent position to take the championship and we received some good media coverage in Quebec.

-Leanne