When Harri met ‘JJ’

about the McLaren F1 and Le Mans 1995 in Octane 208 brought back memories of a tour of Europe I made in 1995 with two good friends in my daily driver 1973 Jaguar XJ6, destination Côte d’Azur but taking in the 24 Heures du Mans on the way.

For all of us young Finnish boys, it was quite an experience! Following an endless convoy of British motorsport fans in their classic and exotic cars, we found a parking area and didn’t even camp; we stayed up for most of the 24 hours and grabbed some sleep in the car.

At first, we didn’t know that fellow Finn, JJ Lehto, was driving a McLaren, and I was mostly cheering for the XJ220 Jaguars.

Over the night it was increasingly exciting to see JJ’s dominance in the rainy conditions, and hear about it on the small radio headsets. We got really close to the finish podium and I took a few good photos of Lehto, Dalmas and Sekiya.

Exactly ten years after that, in 2005, cars had become my job at Porsche Finland and I then owned a 1984 Aston Martin V8 Vantage, which I was driving back from the UK after a trip there for a holiday and to have some work done on the car.

On the ferry from Germany to Denmark, I noticed JJ Lehto getting out of a Toyota Hiace van. I hadn’t met him personally but we had some mutual friends, so I went to say hello and we sat for a coffee for the short ferry trip. It was one week before Le Mans, where he was going to drive an Audi – to another win – and he was taking his Harley-Davidson there so that the bike would get a free ride to the US East Coast, where JJ was later going to ride Route 66 to Los Angeles!

We decided to meet up again on the ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki, if we both made it to the same boat – so we had a race of sorts, which I lost, driving a V8 Vantage against his Toyota Hiace. All because my endurance wasn’t even close to his, and I had to stop for a nap on the way.

We both made it, nevertheless, and had dinner together on the overnight ferry. Such a nice guy. Harri Asunta, Helsinki, Finland