A couple of years ago Sébastien Ogier and I were walking around the Toyota Museum. It was the day after Rally Japan and there was a trip for anybody interested to go and take a look at this firm’s magnificent motorized history.
Turning a corner, we bumped into Juha Kankkunen. Ogier slowed and smiled.
“Morning boss,” he said.
Slightly surprised at the deference, I jokingly reminded Ogier that he had twice the number of world titles the Finn had managed.
“It’s Juha Kankkunen,” Ogier smiled back. “He is a legend.”
And now he really is the boss. Or he is for some of the time while Jari-Matti Latvala is absent, busman holidaying his Toyota Celica on rounds of the 2025 European Historic Rally Championship.
Ask Latvala what he thinks about Kankkunen being his deputy and the response says it all. He takes Ogier’s ‘legend’ and raises it through the roof. He’s royalty in these parts.
“When I was a young boy, when I managed to get to meet Juha Kankkunen, my hands were shaking. I was 15 years old when I really properly managed to meet him for the first time. My father took me to his farm. Then I could never imagine being a team principal – and secondly, to share the job with Juha Kankkunen!
“Like you know, he has been working as an ambassador for the team and we have been travelling quite a lot together, going to eat together and things like that. It’s been very, very nice to talk with him and we share a lot of the same opinions. So it’s perfect, I would say, perfect this role to support me as a team principal.”
What does it mean, this title of deputy team principal? Will Kankkunen genuinely get his hands dirty when he’s in the chair? That’s the plan. This is a hire which gives his current ambassadorial role teeth. And, while there remains a figurehead aspect to his presence, there’s no mistaking the Finn’s coming in to make a difference where he can.
Kankkunen: “It’s a kind of dream to be asked to do this job. I was going to retire completely, but then I have been now two years doing little bit of demonstration work and helping where I can help the team and things and it’s a great pleasure.
“For me, the important part of the team principal job… it’s just team spirit and teamwork. I mean, you have to have all the right people. If the cook is not doing the good food, it doesn’t work. So everybody is important and everybody is pushing together and the team spirit, the feeling there, it makes it, you know, that everybody is smiling.”
Kankkunen enjoys a close relationship with Toyota Motor Corporation chairman Akio Toyoda. But he’s not the first member of the automotive world’s first family, Juha’s worked with.
He added: “I’ve been two years and we’ve been driving with him and working with him and we are good friends – and his father was the big boss at the time when I started with Toyota, beginning of ’80s. So this is second generation for me.”
And the relationship with Latvala?
“Very good,” he said. “Jari-Matti is really a good person and it’s so easy to talk with him. And the same people will still be there. Jari-Matti will still be behind [the scenes] and Haruna-san will be there. All the other guys, they know the work and I know them. I can’t see that it’s a big problem. I can always go and ask if I need some help or information or whatever.”
For the first time in ages, I spent some time with Kankkunen earlier this year and it was clear he was as sharp as ever. He showed me how to drift a tractor on a frozen lake and then pinned an all-electric Audi e-tron GT across the same lake at warp factor 10. Drivers drive. Always. But do drivers manage?
Kankkunen can. Now, he’s not going to be a master strategist in the shape of a Cesare Fiorio or Andrea Adamo, but he will feed into Toyota’s management structure in the same way Latvala does. Kankkunen might be a generation or two down the road when it comes to winning world championships behind the wheel, but the emotions and the psychology of driving at this elite level haven’t changed. His input from a driver’s perspective will be second-to-none and deliver ultimate value to the team. Apart from the cigars. They’re less fashionable these days.
For the sport, for the championship, it’s fantastic news. As well as the opportunity to watch Kankkunen at work, the service park has a phenomenal resource in terms of history and context. What was it like to drive the Whistling Pig (Toyota’s Celica TCT) on the limit? What was Ove Andersson really like as a boss? Secrets of the post-Safari Serena pool party? We’ll do our bit to make sure that’s all coming your way through 2025.
Maybe not all of it. Some stories are best left locked away.
