Jari-Matti Latvala’s learned a lot since his professional driving career ended, and he became Toyota’s team principal.
Since accepting the role in 2021, Latvala’s appreciated Sébastien Ogier in a different light, witnessed Kalle Rovanperä’s star rise and overseen his first victory, as well as Oliver Solberg, Takamoto Katsuta and Sami Pajari.
Seeing things with a wider perspective, Latvala has been able to realize where he went wrong in his own career – but has rarely had the opportunity to apply those lessons.
That’s what Rally Finland 2026 was about.
The three-time winner of his home event was competing in the RC2 class for the third consecutive year. In 2024 he was second; 2025 too. In 2026, finally, he won.
All victories taste sweet, but this was more than a win for Latvala. It was a chance for him to prove something – not to others, but to himself.
“I’m really, really relieved and really happy,” Latvala told DirtFish. “This result I can live for quite a long time.
Latvala didn't score points in WRC2, but he was the fastest RC2 car
“It’s because, you know, my professional career ended in 2019. It didn’t finish in the way I would have wanted it to finish – I thought that one day I want to win something still in the World Rally Championship.
“I know that you can’t compete in the top category if you don’t drive all the time. I mean, I can’t manage to fight with these guys. But in the WRC2, it’s still possible what we’ve seen in the last two years.
“I’ve been so close to the win that I thought: I want to do it and I want to win it. And I want to prove it to myself that I can drive under the pressure.”
That’s exactly what he did.
Latvala wasn’t registered for WRC2 points as he didn’t want to interfere with anyone’s championship, but that didn’t matter. This was still a win.
“Yeah, that was the thing, I wanted to be the first Rally2 car,” he said. “And my idea was I didn’t register for the championship, for the points actually because I didn’t want to steal points from anybody that could basically spoil their championships when you do just one round of the season.”
The tantalizing thing for Latvala – who has no intention to stop entering Rally Finland – is with the regulation change next year, he could fight for the overall victory in a Rally2 car.
“Well, I have to say that next year the cars are going to be closer to Rally2 cars, but still the speed, even though we go for the slower cars next year, the drivers who are in the first category, they still have a little bit more speed than I do,” Latvala confessed.
“I’m quite sure about that. But let’s see. It would be for sure an interesting element to see that level where I am between them when the cars are quite close. But let’s see what happens.
“I don’t know what we will do in the WRC [in the future], but I can tell you this wasn’t the last round of my career. But when and where, I can’t tell you now. Now I will try the European Historic Championship to continue for the end of the season. And then I have to also think about my position together with Juha [Kankkunen, deputy team principal] for the future, what we want to do.”
