Toyota team principal Jari-Matti Latvala just cannot resist getting back in the driver’s seat as often as his professional commitments allow.
This year Latvala will be job-sharing with Juha Kankkunen in his role as Toyota’s WRC team boss so that he can contest an FIA European Historic Rally Championship campaign aboard his beloved Toyota Celica Turbo ST185.
But that is still not enough. His EHRC season opener in Spain may kick off only next week, but Latvala will be out in action before then in more contemporary machinery.
Latvala and Toyota test driver Juho Hänninen – who has regularly co-driven for him over the past five years – will take the start of this Saturday’s Savonlinna Ralli (March 8). Based in eastern Finland, close to the Russian border, the third round of the Finnish championship is also Hänninen’s home event.
This time the pair will compete in the same GR Yaris Rally2 that they took to second in WRC2 on last year’s Rally Finland.
“Juho has been requesting that would we drive over there, and I said that quite early on, at the end of the last year, that yes, we can go for it,” Latvala told DirtFish.
“At that point, it was more thinking about the Celica, but eventually there was now coming an opportunity to drive a Rally2 car, the very same car we drove on the Rally Finland 2024. So we’re going to go out there to see what is our level [compared with] the youngsters.”
Savonlinna is just a stone’s throw from Hänninen birthplace of Punkaharju, but it is not a familiar region for Latvala.
“I’ve never been driving myself in this area, so it’s a new area for me,” he admitted. “But Juho knows the roads, so I said to him that you could actually do maybe one of the stages.
“But he wasn’t eager. He said: ‘I don’t have a budget to do the stages!’”
