First stage after lunch on Friday afternoon in Sardinia five years ago – that’s where Jari-Matti Latvala’s career ended.
Remember that one? Tula, second time around. J-ML had sat down to a plate of pasta in Alghero full of beans. He was leading the rally. And loving life. Sure, there was the odd tickle, the odd tweak he still wanted Toyota to make to his Yaris WRC, but essentially it was all there. He was up for the fight and ready for his maiden win of the 2019 season.
An hour or so later, he was on his roof after one of the most stupid mistakes of his career. Cutting an innocuous hairpin too tight toppled the Toyota and left Latvala empty after he’d lifted the car virtually single-handed to get it back on its wheels.
I sat with Latvala that night. I’d wanted to know what on earth had gone on. Leading the rally and such a rookie error. The Finn wasn’t there. He was there, but he wasn’t. He was distracted. Odd.
Fast forward a few months and there’s the #10 hurtling over a crest before a chicane in the middle of a right-hander in Penmachno. No chance of making the corner, the left-rear slams into the bank and the car’s roofed and in the trees.
Same. Odd. No sensible explanation.
Until now.
Latvala exited early from Rally GB in 2019 - the penultimate event of his final season
“I can be very honest,” Latvala told DirtFish, “I lost the passion for driving in 2019. Until that year, always coming to a World Rally Championship event, I had always, you know, a bit of excitement in the body. During that year when it was difficult.
“It was difficult because of my personal relationships, but also the problems [I was having] with the taxation things. They started to get in my head. And when I coming to the events, I wasn’t nervous anymore. That was actually a bad sign. You think it would be good, but it wasn’t.
“When you are not excited anymore, you lose a little bit the nervous feeling. You have lost the passion for competition. I only realized this after that season. That was the sign when I should have got more critical about it.”
Add in the fact that he’d turned 34 and was watching the spotlight on a 17-year-old countryman called Kalle growing ever-brighter and you have an understanding of how the pressure was building. As that 2019 season was slipping away, Latvala was trying to tighten his grip, but as he’s pointed out, he didn’t have the capacity to deal with competition at that elite level.
On reflection, was that the end of the road? Maybe not.
Spain 2019 would mark the end for part one of Latvala's career
He added: “If I would have managed the situation better, you never know. Maybe I would have been driving now.”
He pauses, there’s a reflection on that last point. He’s just sealed a fourth straight manufacturers’ title for Toyota. There’s the flip side.
“But on the other hand,” he ventured, “I would never have been the team principal. So it’s always two aspects on the side. And being in this job and seeing the drivers and the way the drivers are, what they’re doing, I also realized it – my mistakes, what I did.
“So even if I carried on, probably I would have never been world champion because I would have needed the break to understand the mistakes what I was doing.”
It’s a mark of Latvala’s ruthless self-analysis that he’s open-minded enough to understand what cursed his attempt at the prize he cherished above all others.
But those tilts at an FIA title aren’t quite done yet…
“It took a couple of years after 2019,” he said. “And when I’ve been doing these events with the Celica, I realized it started, the feeling started to come back. And it’s been coming more and more.
Latvala has refound joy behind the wheel in his Rally Finland appearances
“And 2023, Rally Finland, for the first time I felt, now it’s, you know, the old feeling is really back. And ’24, I can feel that it was coming even more. And then that was the decision I said, now I realize that what I know, what I learned, what I have done, now that all the skills are back.
“In 2019 I had lost them because my mind was far away. But I have got my mind back, so now I want to enjoy the driving again. Now it’s time and I feel the passion has come back. And at the same time there was this opening, a new door, that the European Historic Championship was changing the regulations and allowing newer cars to come in.
“One of my favorite cars has been the Toyota Celica ST185 and the year 1993 when Juha Kankkunen won the championship. This has been my like one dream, to drive that car in a competition. And now it’s going to happen.”
Latvala’s done driving in the dark, he’s back and the world – or Europe at least – is waiting.
