Jonne Halttunen’s a man used to a packed schedule, having competed in the World Rally Championship alongside Kalle Rovanperä for years.
That may have ended (for now), but the Finn’s calendar isn’t looking any quieter.
He’s got confirmed TV work, he’s now been announced as project manager for Toyota’s GR Corolla RC2 project in America, and he’s also got the small matter of taking on his first complete rally season as a driver.
A two-time world champion in the co-drivers’ seat, the 40-year-old has driven his Toyota Corolla AE86 in competitive rallies twice before, with a few more appearances as a course car.
But in 2026, Halttunen and co-driver Tuukka Shemeikka are committed to a full season in Finland’s F-Cup, starting as early as tomorrow (Saturday February 7) and the Laukaa-Uurainen Talviralli.
“F-Cup is the most legendary rally series in Finland,” Halttunen said, appearing on DirtFish’s podcast SPIN, The Rally Pod. “It used to be like only blind rallies. On YouTube, a lot of these crash videos, many of them are from Finland and they are from this F-Cup.
“So in the past, before mobile phones, there could be like 30 cars crashing in the same corner because it’s just blind. They don’t have any pacenotes.
“Nowadays it’s also with pacenotes, which I will use, but there’s also still a class without pacenotes. But it’s a bit different if you think about national championships. There you have all of these fancy Rally2, Rally4, even Rally5 cars, but this championship… you can use some of these but it’s basically for the cars without homologation anymore.
“So there are a lot of like E36 M3s which are quite popular nowadays, over 400 horsepower, lots of different kind of cars but you have classes for two-wheel drive, also for four-wheel drive.”
Halttunen, who’ll make a TV series from his expedition, wanted to do F-Cup specifically because it’s going back to not just rallying’s roots, but his own.
Halttunen loves the spirit of F-Cup, where he'll drive his Corolla this year
“People are building these cars in their garages,” he added. “OK, it has gotten a bit out of hand, like the cars can cost, I don’t know, €150,000. It’s a bit similar to the modified class in Ireland, but a bit more restricted. At least the base of the engine has to be from some mass production car. So you cannot use like Millington engines because they are not mass produced.
“But I like the spirit that people are building cars themselves and it’s not so fancy like in national championships. But there’s the Finnish driver Eerik Pietarinen, if you remember him from Rally2, he won the title actually last year with a similar Corolla that I have.
“And there’s a lot of ex pro, proper rally drivers. Even Toni Gardemeister has a car for this class, Kalle would like to have a car for this class and it’s nice with the old cars. They look like old cars but in the end many of them have modern technology inside of them. So it’s a cool class and that’s actually where I started my rallying back in 2007. So I wanted to go back to the roots.
“It’s a funny story, I guess it’s 2008. I remember the Rally HQ was in a school and Janne Ferm was sitting in the same bench as me and we were discussing, ‘Yeah, this rally is coo’l and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And in the end, we ended up as good friends and even team-mates and both ended up to WRC.
“But at that point, it was just a pure hobby. And that’s what I love from that series, that many of the top drivers come back because it’s just fun.”
In an enlightening and engaging interview, Halttunen goes on to outline his thoughts on the future of Finnish rallying, his new role in the ARA and how it felt sitting watching the WRC season opener in Monte Carlo from the sidelines.
You can listen now on your favored podcast provider, via the episode player above, or for an ad-free experience join Club DirtFish at Silver tier level.
