Affinity is felt, rarely described. It comes naturally; it can’t be forced. And in this case, might it be the key to success?
Spending so much time in, and out of, the rally car means World Rally Championship drivers and co-drivers must understand each other inside-out.
With intense on-event schedules and major off-event preparation, this process happens quickly. But it’s a lot easier when the two characters are naturally similar anyway.
Sami Pajari has marked himself out as a major world rallying talent in 2026. He’s known to be calculated and composed, and generally unperturbed. But he’s not the only one.
So is his co-driver, Marko Salminen.
“I know how he thinks,” Salminen told DirtFish in an exclusive interview. “The way we think, it’s the same way for everything.
Pajari and Salminen know how each other think
“Sami and I are such good friends, even though we are not the same age, so it’s so easy to speak and we both, let’s say, have such similar passion for rallying like the whole all our life, so it’s easy to speak about everything.
“He’s such a cool guy that we just speak and have fun.”
Pajari and Salminen have almost a telepathic connection, where they are so naturally in-tune with each other it takes no effort to communicate. And that frees up mental capacity to focus on performance.
“Already when I was with Sami in 2020 and ’21, almost from the very beginning the connection we have it’s so… I cannot explain it,” Salminen added.
“But for example, if I tell him what the engineers tell us we need to change to the setup or whatever, when we stop the car we don’t speak so much. We just know what we do.
“It comes so naturally. It’s hard to explain, but the connection is so crazy. It’s so easy and nice.”
The best way to understand the advantage of this is if you’ve ever played a rallying video game, you may have produced your best stage times when you aren’t thinking. Instead, you are relying on instinct alone and thinking about things other than the driving.
Salminen is impressed by how humble Pajari remains despite the success
“Yeah, I really agree,” said Salminen. “I always thought before Sami that I had amazing road memory, that no-one can remember the places as well as I do. But after Sami, my name is somewhere here and Sami is on the top.
“He’s crazy good. And that means we don’t need to watch videos the whole night. Of course we work through everything, check everything together and things, but we always can sleep our nights.
“So that’s how it’s also nice that we can rest during the event. That it’s not just videos, videos, videos all night.”
There are clearly worse jobs to have in the world than competing in the WRC. However elite sport demands a lot from individuals, including stress, pressure and workload. But Pajari and Salminen don’t forget to enjoy themselves, too.
“We have fun,” Salminen said. “Like during the recce, we always go to eat in the evenings together somewhere. We don’t watch the videos all evening. We do the work that is needed and then we just enjoy.
“I always do how Sami wants and how he is,” he added, “because sometimes he wants to be quiet, and sometimes he wants to speak, so it depends what mood he’s in. We can speak from the left to right, so there is nothing [off the table].
“We always speak about some sport or some TV, it can be whatever in life. Sometimes it’s really serious conversations, sometimes just something really funny.”
Above all, Salminen points to Pajari’s humility as being a core strength. Despite all the success this year, nothing has changed in either of them.
“He is so cool and relaxed and so strong mentally, like always on the road sections, there is no any stress of anything,” Salminen concluded.
“He’s so calm and so humble always, and I really appreciate him for how he is and how he acts after, let’s say, this year and those podiums, he’s totally the same guy, so humble and always has time for everyone.
“So that’s maybe to me one of the best things to see all the time: what he is as a person.”
