Hirvonen on victory hopes and speed records

After finishing second to one Sebastien for the past two years in Mexico, I was determined not to follow another one home for the third year in a row last week. But the rally did not quite go to plan for Jarmo [Lehtinen, co-driver] and me.

It started well, with fastest time in qualifying, but after that we were just missing something in the fight to keep up with Sebastien Ogier. At first, we were trying to catch Mads Ostberg, who was going really well in his Fiesta. It would have been an interesting battle with him if he hadn't had his problem on Saturday morning.

But when Mads was gone, the focus for me was very clear: we had to get to the finish and we had to take points for second. We had a puncture on the final day of the second leg, which cost us two minutes and made the gap look bigger than it was.

It also made sure there was an interesting race on Sunday morning, when we had only seven seconds on Thierry Neuville going into the final day. I saw that Thierry was talking about going flat-out and so was Malcolm [Wilson, M-Sport team principal] - I think those two might have had a plan...

Hirvonen had to settle for second again © LAT

I knew I had to push from the start of the stage on Sunday morning, but that one is so long [Guanajuatito, 34 miles] and you never really know what is going to happen. When we saw some marks going off the road in a tight corner, I thought: "Those marks look fresh - I think that's Thierry." This was confirmed when he was 13 seconds down on us at the next split. He made things a little bit easier for us, but, for sure, he is really, really fast now.

So, we got second - again - but we couldn't match Volkswagen last week and we have to work very hard to change that.

One of the problems for me in Mexico is that I was driving the car too sideways. I have to learn to drive it more straight, more like a front-wheel-drive car. This isn't my style; I drive with the car sliding - sometimes even before the corner! But that doesn't work so well now, we have to be more neat and tidy.

And I'm going to be working on that when we test in Portugal next week.

So, that was Mexico and my day job. Before I went to that rally, I was working on a different project - but one that involved a smaller engine and just one seat. That project was to try to beat the world record for the fastest speed made indoors. And I was in a kart! Tanner Foust held the record in a rallycross-specification Ford Fiesta at 86.97mph.

I have to say, this wasn't as straightforward as I thought it would be. We had some corners to get through and we had to carry speed through those corners to make sure we were at a good speed when we came to the straight section in the Helsinki indoor arena.

The problem was the grip, or the lack of it to be more precise! It was so slippery, all the way up to fifth gear we were spinning the wheels, so it was difficult to get up to speed. But we got there in the end. It was good fun, but we're already looking for more - and the good news is that we've found an even bigger space to go even faster.

Despite pushing this hard, Hirvonen could not beat Ogier © LAT

We'll be using the same kart when we try to break the record again, for sure this one can go a lot faster.

The kart is capable of doing more than 100mph. At the moment the gear ratios allow us to get just over 100mph, but we can change them to give us even more top speed.

But, of course, it does come down to stopping the kart as well at the end. When we broke the record and we finally came to a stop, I got out and there was still 1.5 metres before we were going to hit the wall; we could have gone faster than 86.99mph!

That's a job for another day...