Sami Pajari will be among the first to drive the all new Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 for the 2024 season, while the team will also change to the Finland based Printsport Racing.
The 2024 rally season starts from Monaco in January with the traditional season opener of Rallye Monte-Carlo. Toyota, having seen success in the WRC category during recent years, is unleashing their own Rally2 car for the WRC2 series. Among the very first drivers to get to helm the new beast will be the Finnish rising star Sami Pajari together with his co-driver Enni Mälkönen.
Toyota has not previously had a car for the second category of the World Rally Championship and only unveiled the upcoming Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 to the public a year ago. As a Rally2 contender, the new car will also find its place at the top category of the European Rally Championship as well as national championships across the world.
Instead of running the new cars with their own team, Toyota has instead opted to operate through a number of selected customer teams. The Finland based Printsport Racing is one of the first teams fielding their own Yaris GR Rally2 fleet. Founded in 1997, Printsport Racing operates nowadays in the famous Jyväskylä region, with names the likes of Esapekka Lappi, Teemu Suninen and Jari Huttunen in the list of drivers they have previously worked with. Pajari gets to add his name to that list, in addition to topping the list of Toyota Yaris GR Rally2 drivers.
“I am grateful to all our partners for the opportunity to continue my career in this new, exciting project. Special thanks go of course to my long-term supporters, such as our headline partner CapitalBox, who all greatly believe in me. It’s wonderful to see our cooperation continue”, Pajari thanks his supporters.
Pajari sees the new Rally2 car as a great opportunity.
“While Toyota has made winning cars in the past, I also believe in their vision for the future. That is why I really wanted to choose this car, especially now that I also had the unique opportunity to be among the first to drive it in a WRC event. Naturally it will be interesting to get to compare its performance to others in the first event. All in all, the opportunity is so wonderful that I decided to take it”, Pajari reasons his decision. “It’s a pretty cool thing,” he acknowledges.
In the WRC2 season of 2023 Pajari competed with Toksport WRT’s Rally2 cars and while he is excited for the future, he also feels sad to leave such a well working relationship behind and has nothing but praise for his old team.
“It was a great team, from which I received enormous support and endless valuable lessons. Toksport was a wonderful place for me to develop as a driver in every way. The performance of the car was always good and our cooperation was nothing but smooth. I want to thank the team manager Serkan Duru from the bottom of my heart for the time we have spent together,” Pajari praises.
Enni Mälkönen will continue as Pajari’s co-driver in 2024. The two have competed together at the WRC level since 2022. Mälkönen became the first woman to win a WRC championship title as the WRC3 co-driver champion of 2022 and Pajari is the only Finn to win the Junior Rally World Championship at the end of the 2021 season.