Sami Pajari and the navigator Enni Mälkönen they will compete in Toyota Gazoo Racing-WRT’s fourth Toyota Rally1 alongside three of the team’s regular Rally Latvia crews. (Subscribe for free to the Telegram channel of Rally Time to receive news on your phone in real time LINK)
The 22-year-old Finnish driver Pajari is considered one of the most exciting young talents in rallying. He became the youngest Junior WRC champion ever when he won the title in 2021, and last year he got his first WRC2 win at Rally Finland.
This year, Pajari drove the new GR Yaris Rally2 car in the highly competitive WRC2 class, where he impressed with race-winning speed on all surfaces, whilst providing valuable feedback to the engineers. At last weekend’s Rally Italia Sardegna he achieved an important victory victory in WRC2 and finished sixth overall.
Granting Pajari the opportunity to move up to Rally1 in Latvia demonstrates TGR-WRT’s ambition to provide a pathway for young talent to reach the global rallying scene – part of TOYOTA GAZOO Racing’s wider global commitment to supporting young drivers in developing their skills and realizing their dreams.
Jari-Matti Latvala (Team Principal)
“In addition to our TOYOTA GAZOO Racing WRC Challenge programme, where we have been training young Japanese drivers since 2015, we also keep an eye on the most talented young drivers competing in the WRC’s support categories. This year we saw that Sami Pajari he is driving very well in our GR Yaris Rally2 and we would like to see his potential in our Rally1 car. Sami is making great strides and achieving better and better results, with a magnificent weekend in Sardinia. Not only is he demonstrating great speed, but he is also providing our engineers with feedback that helps us make an even better car for all our customers. Rally Latvia is a fast and smooth event like Rally Finland and Sami also likes the roads of the Baltic region, so they suit him well and should help him feel more comfortable. It’s also on fast roads like these that you can really feel and understand how the aerodynamics of a Rally1 car work. So we hope Sami and Enni can have a good experience there and get to know the car and the step forward compared to Rally2.”
Sami Pajari
“It’s great to have this opportunity with TOYOTA GAZOO Racing. This is something I’ve been working on for many years, but it’s not that often that there is a seat available in a Rally1 car. It will be a huge challenge because there are so many new things to learn and the pace at the top level is also really high. But I will try not to focus too much on the result or feel any pressure from that side, but just try to have fun and gain as much experience as I can for the future. At least in Latvia the stages are mostly fast and smooth, something I’m quite used to from Finland, and it’s also basically a new event for everyone, so in that sense we’re more or less starting from the same place at the top drivers. I hope that if we can do well, then maybe there will be a chance to do something nice in the future, but that’s something I can’t think about until much later. For now I will just focus on this rally and enjoy it.”
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