Toyota team principal Jari-Matti Latvala is keen to get behind the wheel on more than one round of next year’s World Rally Championship.
Latvala, who with 213 WRC starts is the second most experienced driver of all time, has combined his managerial role with driving in recent years. He won last year’s European Historic Rally Championship with his own Toyota Celica Turbo 4WD and leads the way in this year’s gravel series.
Aside from a Rally Sweden one-off in 2020, Latvala’s WRC outings since his full-time career ended in 2019 have been confined to Rally Finland. Driving Toyota’s GR Yaris Rally2, he has finished first or second in the RC2 class of his home event for each of the past three years.
But next year, Latvala plans to spread his wings and is eyeing the WRC’s return to the UK, where he competed regularly as a teenager.
“I probably will myself be still driving with the Celica, some historic events,” Latvala told DirtFish. “I want to continue that, but the rest is still open.”
Latvala has regularly entered Rally Finland in recent seasons, but wants to add Scotland to his 2027 program
He added: “I had a fantastic feeling driving in Rally Finland with a Rally2 car. And Sébastien Ogier was now beating my record with the WRC starts. So of course it’s a bit tempting to try to do a few events, you know, and try to get the record back.
“So let’s see. There is a few events I would like to do. I must say that Rally Finland and Rally Scotland are the events I would like to do.”
After a season of contesting British national rallies, Latvala made his WRC debut as a 17-year-old on Rally GB in 2002, driving a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VI. He finished fourth in the British Rally Championship in 2003, winning the South of England Tempest Rally and scoring third-places finish on both the Dumfries-based Scottish Rally and Trackrod Rally Yorkshire.
After stepping up to the WRC full-time in 2004, Latvala went on to win Rally GB in both 2011 and 2012.
“I’ve been driving in the Scottish Rally in the past,” he said. “OK, they are probably different roads but I know how is the forest over there and they’re really, really nice roads.”
Rally Scotland will be based in Aberdeenshire for 2027.
