Toyota is hoping to move into its all-new, purpose-built Finnish rally base and test track as soon as 2026.
Plans for the new facility were unveiled ahead of last year’s Secto Rally Finland, but it’s only now that the team has been able to offer further insight into all-purpose premises which also proposes an asphalt circuit for the initial roll-out of cars from the factory.
Team principal Jari-Matti Latvala told DirtFish: “If everything goes well, we could be in by 2026, but otherwise it will be 2027. It’s a ground-up new building to house everything we need with the program right now. And the track is simply to check the cars after they’ve been built – it’s nothing to do with the high-speed testing. It’s a shakedown facility where the wheels turn for the first time.”
Toyota ran five Rally1 cars at this year's Secto Rally Finland
Since undertaking the test, development and build of its GR Yaris Rally2 car, the manufacturer has outgrown the Jyväskylä base it moved into in 2021. From its inception in 2015, Toyota’s WRC program has moved from Puuppola, where it began life in Tommi Mäkinen’s factory, to Tallinn, Estonia (where the cars were re-prepared after each event) before arriving in Jyskä in the suburbs of Secto Rally Finland’s host city.
The new venue is around 10 miles north of the city, close to the airport.
“The new plans are very exciting,” said Latvala. “And they’re exciting for everybody in Jyväskylä and this part of central Finland. Toyota is committed to regional investment here – that means working with local business in the production of so much of the new facility. For example, we’re planning to use local developers and construction companies.”
