Introducing: Jari Huttunen

HYUNDAI JUNIOR IS FINLAND’S LATEST UP-AND-COMING RALLY STAR

Finland has no shortage of prodigious young rallying talents. Esapekka Lappi and Teemu Suninen turned in eye-catching World Rally Championship performances in 2017, and this year another of the country’s youngsters is set to step into the limelight: Jari Huttunen. But Hyundai’s recent junior recruit – a past winner of the Future Rally Star of Finland award and who will enter a programme of WRC2 rounds in 2018 – originally had no intention of being a rally driver.

“When I started karting I dreamt of racing in Formula 1, then I realised it wasn’t possible because there was no money to drive in junior formulas,” Huttunen explains of the

11 seasons he spent plugging away in karting.

Instead he turned to rallying in 2013, bought the cheapest Rallisprint-eligible car he could find and hit the gravel. A front-wheel-drive title in the Finnish championship came in 2015, followed by a dominant run in the ADAC Opel Rallye

Cup (he scored six wins from seven) in ’16.

Opel was sufficiently impressed and placed him in its junior team for a crack at the European Rally Championship U27 title last year. Huttunen couldn’t make it three titles in a row – he narrowly missed out to Opel team-mate Chris Ingram – and he felt an opportunity had been missed. “It was not my best year,” he concedes. “My results were not so good.”

Huttunen’s determination is one of his key attributes, scoring him the coveted WRC support-series drive with Hyundai over fellow Finnish prodigy Kalle Rovanpera, among others.

“Every time I’m not the fastest I am sad, that’s true,” he says. “I think it’s good, because it gives you lots of motivation to do things better. That’s my style.”

The 23-year-old’s introspection should not be mistaken for a lack of self-confidence, as he expects to be competitive in WRC2 despite having an experience deficit to much of the field.

“My target is to win the championship,” Huttunen states.

“It won’t be easy because almost every rally is new, so I need to learn fast, but I trust we can. I think I need to be more clever, taking all the points I can. That is the biggest thing. We can’t win every rally, so we need to be clever.”