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This is why Finns are the WRC drivers to beat
Five secrets that make Finnish rally drivers the best in the world.
Toyota’s Esapekka Lappi is the 15th winner of a World Rally Championship event to come from Finland, with his recent success at home now making it a total of 177 world rally wins for Finnish drivers (France still leads with 185 wins – mostly shared between Sébastiens: Loeb and Ogier).
Esapekka Lappi, Janne Ferm celebrate the podium
© Ivo Kivistik/Red Bull Content Pool
But what exactly is it that makes Finns so good at rallying? As they like to say in the frozen north: to finish first, first you must be Finnish.
There’s got to be more to it than that though, surely? So, we headed into the depths of a sauna to contemplate the five closely-guarded rallying secrets that make Finns so special…
More gravel roads than the surface of the moon
About 350,000km of unpaved forest roads
© Jaanus Ree/Red Bull Content Pool
If you take all the roads in Finland, they add up to around 454,000 kilometres. Of those, approximately 350,000 kilometres are either unpaved private or forest roads. This is one of the highest proportions of gravel to asphalt roads in western Europe and that’s why the Finns are so good at driving on them.
Many drivers come from farming families, meaning that they have more or less limitless access to what are essentially special stages. And even if they don’t have their own gravel roads, a sideways playground is always only metres away. Currently, 84.4 percent of the Finnish population live in urban areas. Leaving the rest of the country free for budding rally drivers to practice their art.
Generous fairy godfathers
Tommi Makinen of Finland and Subaru in action
© Mark Thompson/Getty Images
They might not have wings, but they do have wallets. Finland has a well-established management structure that invests in young talent early in their careers, hoping to reap the rewards later on. Perhaps the best-known ‘super manager’ is the legendary Timo Joukhi: the man who spotted and bankrolled drivers such as Juha Kankkunen, Tommi Makinen and Jari-Matti Latvala.
And he’s still doing it now. “This isn’t the sort of job that makes you a rich man,” points out Joukhi. “Yes, you get something back if your driver becomes successful, but you also spend a lot of time paying for accidents!” Finnish rally managers really get the whole ‘speculate to accumulate’ thing, which you don't really find anywhere else.
Graduating to driving shortly after leaving your booster seat
Kalle Rovanpera is another young Finnish promise
© Jaanus Ree/Red Bull Content Pool
Kalle Rovanpera (another young driver to have recently joined the Timo Joukhi stable) is only 16, but he’s already won the Latvian Rally Championship as well as two rounds of the Finnish Rally Championship. Chances are, he’ll make his WRC debut on Rally GB later this year. Kalle first drove a rally car aged eight, but by then he was pretty good at it as he’d been driving road cars ever since he was six.
Jari-Matti Latvala was plucked from Finland to go and live in Wales when he was just 17, because at that age you can get a driving licence in the UK and compete on rallies. Here’s an interesting fact that proves the point: the three youngest-ever winners of World Championship rallies (Latvala, Henri Toivonen and Markku Alen) were all from Finland.
Sisu in spades
‘Sisu’ means courage in the face of adversity
© Ivo Kivistik/Red Bull Content Pool
This is the hardest thing of all to translate or explain, but it’s probably the one single most important thing that makes Finnish rally drivers so great. ‘Sisu’ means implacable courage in the face of adversity; a quintessentially Finnish stoical determination to do your best under any circumstances, however insurmountable they appear.
Practising until your right foot is sore
Jari-Matti Latvala and co-driver Miikka Anttila
© Jaanus Ree/Red Bull Content Pool
Because they start so young and are generally quite well-funded, the Finns tend to have thousands of rallying kilometres behind them even from a young age, which is also down to that sisu-like work ethic as well. Basically, you can’t keep them out of their cars. This extends to co-drivers too.
Miikka Anttila, Jari-Matti Latvala’s co-driver, celebrated his 189th WRC start on Rally Finland as a co-driver, which is a new record. And Latvala himself, despite his youthful appearance, has actually started more WRC rallies (178) than Sébastien Loeb.
