I couldn’t decide how to start this story. Toyota’s new facility in Majajärvi will be five times bigger than its current base. And it comes with a test track on its doorstep.
Even on a cold Monday in November, with activity limited to diggers and earth movers, even in the gathering afternoon gloom, you can see the vision. You can see the potential. But putting that into words?
Jarmo Lehtinen made his career out of words. Reading pacenotes to Mikko Hirvonen brought the Finn to within a point of a world title. Since stepping out of a rally car, he’s taken on the key role of CEO with Toyota Gazoo Racing and on Monday, he found precisely the right way of describing both the thinking behind and the importance of Toyota’s new base.
“Today,” he said, “we are laying a first brick. It doesn’t look like much, but every great building, every great team starts exactly like this. With one solid foundation placed with care and with clear vision of what will rise on top of it.
“What will rise here is more than a building. It will be a technical center for the future of motorsport. A place where engineers, mechanics, designers and drivers work side-by-side.
“A place where ideas become parts, parts become cars and cars become champions. There is no better place for it than Jyväskylä. This region is the heart of Finnish rallying. The roads of Rally Finland, the legendary jumps, the drivers who grew up on this gravel and the fans who line these forests every summer.
“Rallying is in the DNA of this city. For years, Jyväskylä has given our team a home. Today, we are making that home permanent.”
Stirring stuff from Jarmo.
And perfect sentiment for what was a very impressive preview of what’s to come.
After making successive bases in Puuppola and Jyskä fit, Majajärvi has been designed to fit the team. This time it’s purpose-built. No compromise. And, from the early imagery, it looks like an enormously swish mix of uber-tech and Finnish design. Imagine McLaren’s Technology Center in the woods, for cars that get muddy and go sideways.
While the first brick of significance was laid on Monday, construction began on the site in August and will be completed in August, 2028. The adjacent test track is done and good to go – the team will use the facility as its permanent shakedown venue from next year.
Lehtinen has been at the heart of the development and, looking out across the site, he smiles a thin smile.
“I’m so excited,” he told DirtFish, “but it’s going to be a long two years! We definitely need it. We’ve grown out from the place where we are at the moment, and it would be nice to have everything under one roof and having the internal logistics working better. The place where we are, it’s not purposely built for us and this will be now.
“The logistics are good. We are 15 minutes to the airport, we are close to the main north-south highway and we’re close to the city for the people who work here. If this [place] is not working, we should look into a mirror and disappear.”
The feeling on Monday afternoon was that the true foundations being laid were for Toyota’s long-term future in the world championship. Majajärvi is clearly about much more than a building. As Lehtinen put it so poetically, it’s about a home.
