This was the third and last 'Thunder in Helsinki' race meeting in our home town. In the two previous years the main event was a race for DTM/ITC touring cars, but when the ITC championship was buried at the end of 1996, the organisers switched to the FIA GT and F3000 championship. The track was a street course located a couple of kilometres away from the centre of Helsinki. It's very narrow, twisty and bumpy, and therefore many drivers found it more suitable for rally cars. The F3000 race, in particular, was a big crashfest. Only 9 drivers managed to finish the race. The interest of the Finnish public was no longer there either so it looks likely that there won't be any more racing on the streets of Helsinki in the future.

Since we were able to get free tickets for Friday, we decided not to attend the race itself. Our tickets allowed us to choose any of the grandstands around the circuit, which gave us a chance to take pictures from various places and angles. The weather was freezing cold and windy, but fortunately it didn't rain.

Despite the cloudy and dark conditions, we decided to use 100 speed negative film. As you can see, the results were quite good considering our limited experience at the time. The pictures were shot using shutter speeds usually somewhere around 1/500 - 1/1000 and manual focusing. We didn't get as much pictures as we would have wanted, because the batteries of our camera ran out, and we had to leave the area to buy new ones. We are never going to repeat this mistake! Rule no. 1: always have a set of spare batteries in your camera bag...