According to the WRC, MTV3's official website was visited by no less than 468,500 unique users, half of which – approximately 250,000 users – entering the site during the pre-season preparation round of Arctic Lapland Rally. Needless to say, most of them wanted to see how Raikkonen would do in his very first rally outing with Citroen.
As a comparison, throughout the entire 2009 season of the World Rally Championship, only Rally Finland recorded a higher audience on the MTV3 website, 279,000. Should we remind you that Raikkonen did his first WRC outing at the wheel of a Fiat Abarth Grande Punto S2000 during last year's Rally of 1000 Lakes?
Bear in mind that Finland had a representative with a clear shot at the world title last year, yet the fans did not burst onto the MTV3 website in the dying stages of the season like they did in the opening round this year, in Sweden (248,191, the 3rd highest in the history of the aforementioned website).
“The World Rally Championship's own website, wrc.com, also had a record breaking weekend, with almost eight million page views during the rally, and a single day record of three million on Friday,” reported the WRC official website.
Had Raikkonen managed to stay on the road during the Friday action, we're pretty sure the Saturday and Sunday audiences would have most definitely registered some records of their own. The former F1 driver lost control of his car and hit a snow bank – damaging his C4 in the process – on Day 1 of the event, but was able to rejoin the field later on and eventually finish the season opener in 30th place.
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