Henri Toivonen

World Rally Championship record
Active years	1975 – 1986
Teams	Talbot, Opel, Porsche, Lancia
Rallies	40
Championships	0
Rally wins	3
Podiums	11
Stage wins	183
Total points	194
First rally	1975 1000 Lakes Rally
First win	1980 Lombard RAC Rally
Last win	1986 Monte Carlo Rally
Last rally	1986 Tour de Corse

Henri Toivonen (August 25, 1956 – May 2, 1986) was a Finnish rally driver born in Jyväskylä, the home of Rally Finland. His father, Pauli Toivonen, was the 1968 European Rally Champion for Porsche and his brother, Harri Toivonen, became a professional circuit racer.

Toivonen took his first World Rally Championship victory with a Talbot Sunbeam Lotus at the 1980 Lombard RAC Rally in Great Britain, when he had just turned 24 years old. He is still the youngest driver ever to win a world rally. Toivonen's next big success came with Lancia. In 1985, he was finally signed up for a full WRC programme, but ended up nearly paralysed early on at a rally in Costa Smeralda. He returned to rallying the same year, winning the last event of the season, the RAC Rally, as well as the 1986 season opener, the Monte Carlo Rally, which his father had won exactly 20 years earlier.

Toivonen, driving a Lancia Delta S4, died in a mysterious accident on May 2, 1986 at the Tour de Corse rally of Corsica, while leading both the event and the championship. His American co-driver, Sergio Cresto, also lost his life as the Delta S4 plunged down a ravine and exploded. The fatal accident had no witnesses and the remains of the Lancia were merely blackened spaceframe, making it impossible to determine the cause of the accident. Within hours of the accident, Jean-Marie Balestre, the President of the FISA, banned the powerful Group B rally cars from competing for the next season, ending rallying's popular supercar era.

Although Toivonen is remembered for his exuberant driving style on gravel, he started his career in circuit racing and was very competitive also on tarmac. During the 1986 Rally of Portugal, he drove his Delta S4 rally car at the Estoril track, setting such a fast time that he would have qualified in sixth position at that year's Formula One Portuguese Grand Prix. Eddie Jordan, in whose Formula Three team Toivonen made a few guest appearances, claimed he was certain that Toivonen would have become a winner in Formula One and compared his performances to Ayrton Senna. The annual Race of Champions, which was originally organised in Toivonen's memory, awards the winning individual driver the Henri Toivonen Memorial Trophy.

Early career

Pauli and Henri Toivonen.

Toivonen learnt to drive when he was five years old. At that time, his father, Pauli Toivonen, was becoming very successful in international rallying. Pauli Toivonen would go on to win the Monte Carlo, 1000 Lakes and Acropolis rallies and become the 1968 European Rally Champion. Although he was born in Jyväskylä, the city that has hosted the Rally Finland since 1951, and his father was connected with the rallying scene, Henri Toivonen started his career in karting and continued in circuit racing in his early years. He won the Finnish Cup in touring cars and then switched to Formula V. In his first year in formulae, he managed to win one round of the Scandinavian Championship. Toivonen graduated to Formula Super-V the next year and won a round of the European Championship, also becoming the 1977 Finnish Champion in the Formula Vee class. Under pressure from his family about the safety of circuit racing, he decided to switch to rallying full time. Toivonen's go-kart was purchased by parents of a 6-year-old Mika Häkkinen, and it became the first of its kind for the future two-time Formula One World Drivers' Champion.

Due to Finnish legislation on new drivers at the time, which limited the top speed on open road to 80 kilometres per hour, Toivonen could not compete in rallying until he was 19 years old. Partnered with Antero Linquist, he made his rally debut in 1975. Within the same year, he competed in his first World Rally Championship event at the 1000 Lakes Rally, now known as Neste Oil Rally Finland, driving a privately entered Simca Rallye 2. He had to retire from the rally during the 36th special stage due to a broken sump. Two years later in only his second world rally, he managed a fifth place at that year's 1000 Lakes in a Chrysler Avenger. In the 1978 season, Toivonen started his season at the Arctic Rally, the round two of both the European Rally Championship and World Rally Championship's "FIA Cup for Drivers", the unofficial World Rally Championship for Drivers. By finishing second, 3:41 minutes behind Ari Vatanen, he placed over seven minutes ahead Markku Alén, who would go on to win the Cup. Toivonen went on to compete in two world rallies for Citroën. Although he did not finish either one of the events, his driving did not go unnoticed. Private Porsche team offered Toivonen a car for the 1000 Lakes Rally, and Chrysler did the same for the Lombard RAC Rally. At his home event, Toivonen had to retire due to an engine failure, but at the RAC Rally, he drove to a ninth place finish. That same year, Toivonen captured his first rally win at the Nordic Rally, an event in the Finnish Rally Championship. In the 1979 season, he concentrated on gathering rallying experience by competing in 15 rallies in the British, Finnish and European championships. Toivonen also competed in two WRC events; at the 1000 Lakes with a Fiat 131 Abarth and at the RAC with a Ford Escort RS, but retired in both. However, at his home event he was matching the pace of the leaders before leaving the road. These performances then led to a seat at the Talbot Competition team for the 1980 season.

Works career

Talbot (1980-81)

The Talbot factory team contract meant the advent of Toivonen's first "works" season, and 1980 was largely a trial year for him. He started the season by winning the Arctic Rally in January, but only drove his Talbot Sunbeam Lotus in four selected World Rally Championship events. Due to his exuberant driving style that often led to crashes, his results were not often representative of his pace. At the 1000 Lakes Rally, Toivonen retired due to an accident during the 11th special stage. In hopes of better results by finding a suitable co-driver for him, the team kept trying out different co-drivers by switching Toivonen's partner between Antero Lindquist, Paul White and Neil Wilson. At the next rally in San Remo with Lindquist, Toivonen drove his Talbot to a fifth place. Later, partnered by White, who Toivonen called "Chalkie" due to his last name, surprised both experts and spectators by winning the Lombard RAC Rally in late November, over four minutes ahead of Hannu Mikkola. Neither Toivonen nor Talbot were expected to competitive in the rally. In an interview published in Autosport three days before the rally started, even Toivonen himself did not expect to challenge for the win:

"I don’t think that I have done enough events to win the rally just by driving skill, for instance. If I win, it will be because I have a little bit of luck and some of the others have trouble. I mean, Hannu Mikkola knows the forests like the back of his hand so there is no use trying to drive to beat him. You have to wait for him to have trouble. Then you are in with a chance."

Being only 24 years old, he was and still is the youngest driver ever to win a WRC event. Markku Alén had earlier won his first world rally at 24, and later François Duval achieved the same five days before his 25th birthday in 2005. When Paul White commented over twenty years after the event, he said that he still receives questions about the rally and Henri Toivonen. He noted the Talbot team, ran by Des O'Dell and 15 full-time personnel, was very small compared to others and "had to draft in 'mercenary' mechanics to help." Toivonen's results led to another year in the Talbot squad. In the 1981 season, he was signed up for a larger WRC programme and had a new co-driver, Fred Gallagher, who would later partner Juha Kankkunen and Björn Waldegård in a Toyota Celica Turbo. Toivonen's rear-wheel drive Group 2 Talbot Sunbeam was now outdated compared to the new Group B cars, but with second places at Rally Portugal and San Remo, as well as a fifth place at the Monte Carlo Rally, Toivonen's seven WRC outings resulted in a seventh place overall in the World Rally Drivers' Championship. He also competed in the last round of the British Rally Championship, Audi Sport International Rally, and won the event.

Opel (1982-83)

Toivonen driving the Opel Manta 400.

In the 1982 season, Toivonen switched to the Rothmans-sponsored Opel team and drove the Ascona 400. Opel was co-managed by David Richards who had won the World Rally Championship as a co-driver for Ari Vatanen a year earlier, and would go on to form Prodrive in 1984. Toivonen's team mates were Vatanen, the 1980 World Rally Champion Walter Röhrl and Jimmy McRae, previous year's British Rally Champion and father of future rally star Colin McRae. Toivonen had problems adopting to the new car and competed in only five WRC events, but finished on the podium twice, at the Acropolis Rally and at the RAC Rally. In the European Rally Championship, he participated in four rallies gathering a score of three podiums and one retirement. He also made a guest appearance in one round of the British Formula Three Championship, and finished tenth with a Ralt RT3.

In the 1983 season, Toivonen continued with Opel now driving the Manta 400. Manta 400 was a Group B car, but it was underpowered against the likes of Audi Quattro A2 and Lancia 037, which were controlling the world rally scene at the time. Toivonen achieved a win at the Manx International Rally in the Isle of Man, at his first attempt. He also finished first at the Mille Pistes rally in France, but the organisers decided to ban the Group B cars halfway through the event. Toivonen and his co-driver, Ian Gindrod, were forced to settle for a consolation trophy. His best results in the World Rally Championship were a sixth place at the Monte Carlo Rally and a fourth place at the San Remo Rally. He also drove a Ferrari 308 GTB at the San Marino Rally but retired from the race. At that rally, he was co-driven by Juha Piironen for the first time. Piironen would become his main co-driver for the next two seasons, and later have a long and successful partnership with future four-time World Rally Champion Juha Kankkunen. In late October, Toivonen competed in two sportscar races, driving a Porsche 956 for Richard Lloyd Racing in the World Endurance Championship. Partnered with Derek Bell and Jonathan Palmer, he finished fourth at Imola and third in the next race at Mugello.

Porsche (1984)

After a score of ten starts, two podiums and five retirements, Toivonen left Opel Team Europe for the 1984 season. He was linked to be the lead driver in the new Peugeot 205 T16 for the Peugeot Talbot squad. However, he signed up to drive a Porsche 911 for the Rothmans-sponsored Porsche factory team in the European Rally Championship. The team was run by David Richards and his new motorsport group, Prodrive. Toivonen also drove for Lancia Martini who offered him a Lancia 037 for three WRC events. His European season with Porsche turned out to be a success. He started with two retirements, a third and a second place, but went on to win five rallies in a row, and despite missing several events due to ill health, he finished second in the championship, narrowly losing the title to Italian Lancia driver Carlo Capone. In the World Rally Championship, he competed in only three events. His best result was third at his home event, 1000 Lakes Rally. With these results, Toivonen consolidated his reputation as one of the most talented drivers in international rallying. He stayed with the Lancia team for the 1985 season.

Lancia (1985-86)

Lancia 037 at the 2005 Historic Motorsport Show at Stoneleigh, West Midlands.

The 1985 season did not start well, as Toivonen crashed his Lancia 037 into a brick wall at the Costa Smeralda Rally, an event in the European Rally Championship, causing himself a serious back injury and breaking three vertebrae in his neck. Later, Toivonen and fellow team mate Markku Alén lost a friend and co-Lancia driver, when Attilio Bettega had a fatal crash during the fourth special stage at the Tour de Corse. After recovering from his injuries, Toivonen made a comeback at his home event, the 1000 Lakes Rally, in August and finished fourth. At the next rally in San Remo, he drove his 037 on the podium for the first time by finishing third. This was his final rally with the Lancia 037, a car that did not suit his driving style. The car had fallen well behind Audi and Peugeot in terms of performance, as it had only 325 horsepower compared to the 440 of Peugeot and 500 of Audi. It was replaced by Lancia Delta S4 for the final event of the season; the RAC Rally. The Delta S4 was both supercharged and turbocharged, the former providing mid-range power and the latter more power in the higher revolutions per minute. Lancia had earlier tested the model in the European Rally Championship, but it had turned out to be unreliable. Due to constant delays in homologating the S4, Alén had even speculated of a move to Peugeot. With new modifications, the Delta S4 turned out to be a success, as Toivonen won the rally and Alén finished second only 56 seconds behind. Although Toivonen competed in only four world rallies in 1985, his results placed him sixth overall in the championship.

The 1986 season saw a great start for Toivonen. He took a dominant win at the Monte Carlo Rally with a new co-driver Sergio Cresto. Fellow Flying Finns Timo Salonen and Hannu Mikkola secured a triple win for Finland. Toivonen's father, Pauli Toivonen, had won the event exactly 20 years earlier after the first four contestants, including the first driver to cross the finishing line, Timo Mäkinen, were disqualified due to their rally cars having non-standard headlights. The disqualification caused an uproar and Prince Rainier of Monaco refused to attend the prize-giving ceremony. Henri Toivonen's victory made his father comment that "now the name of Toivonen has been cleared". The Monte Carlo win made Toivonen the favourite for the title. However, at the Swedish Rally he had to retire from the lead due to an engine failure. At the next rally in Portugal, Joaquim Santos, driving a Ford RS200, lost control of his vehicle plunging into the crowd and killing three spectators. More than 30 were injured. All the factory teams, including Lancia, decided to withdraw from the race. During the Portuguese rally, Toivonen also tested his Delta S4 at the Estoril circuit. He set such a fast time that he would have qualified in sixth position at the 1986 Portuguese Grand Prix. Despite the setbacks, Toivonen remained the title favourite as no driver seemed to be able to match his pace.

Death

After the accident, only blackened space frame remained of Toivonen's Lancia Delta S4.

The 1986 Tour de Corse, a world rally around the island of Corsica, began on Thursday, May 1. Toivonen had a sore throat and was suffering from flu, but he insisted on driving after having his championship lead reduce in the last two rallies. According to several sources, he was also taking medicine to treat fever. Regardless of his ill health, he was taking stage win after stage win and leading the rally by a large margin. After day one, the first leg, Toivonen commented on the event:

"This rally is insane, even though everything is going well at the moment. If there will be trouble, I'm as good as dead." (Original Finnish quote: "Tämä ralli on mieletön, vaikka kaikki meneekin nyt hyvin. Jos tulee ongelmia, olen mennyttä.")

Toivonen was complaining about the car being too powerful for a rally like the Tour de Corse. He found it very hard to keep the car balanced on the road and admitted it was very exhausting. In a short interview before he steered his Lancia on the 18th stage, Toivonen made a comment which would remain his last words in public:

"We have today driven the equivalent of a full Jyskälä. It's hard to keep up with the speed." ("Me ollaan tänään jo ajettu yhden kokonaisen Jyskälän verran. Ei siinä meinaa pää pysyä mukana.")

During the second leg, on Friday, May 2, at the seventh kilometre of the 18th stage, Corte - Taverna, Toivonen's Lancia went off the side of the road at a tight left corner with no guardrail. The car plunged down a ravine and landed on its roof. The aluminium fuel tank underneath the driver's seat was ruptured by the trees and exploded. The fuel tank was not protected by a skid plate, an item used mainly on gravel rallies, which was not fitted for the all-asphalt Tour de Corse. This incident happened within seconds and Toivonen and his co-driver, Sergio Cresto were trapped and did not have time to get out had they still been alive. The fire caused by the explosion was so intense that the Delta S4 was unidentifiable as a car afterwards. The car's bodywork was made of kevlar-reinforced plastic composite which burnt readily. Both Toivonen and Cresto burnt to death on their seats. Toivonen left behind wife Erja and two young children; son Markus and daughter Arla. Cresto was single and had no children.

Toivonen's accident remains a mystery to this day as it had no close witnesses. Although it was caught on tape by a spectator further down the stage, it proved to be impossible to determine the cause of the crash from the footage. No race marshalls were close to the scene to notice the black smoke and no-one at the race finish knew about the accident. Toivonen's team started to expect something might have happened only after he failed to arrive from the stage on schedule. The next rally crew through the stage then mentioned they had seen some black smoke. By the time the emergency vehicles arrived on the accident scene, they could only put down the flames, which were fanned by a breeze. Lancia engineers and technicians could not determine the cause for the accident, as the remains of the car were so charred. Walter Röhrl later confirmed that Toivonen was taking medicine for his flu, but the cause of the accident is still unknown.

Aftermath

Within hours of Toivonen's accident, Jean-Marie Balestre and the FISA decided to ban Group B cars from competing for the 1987 season. The planned Group S was also cancelled and manufacturers got stuck with cars they could not race. Audi and Ford withdrew from Group B racing immediately, but other teams competed until the end of the season. The Tour de Corse was continued the next day and Bruno Saby took the win with his Peugeot 205 Turbo 16 E2. FISA was criticised for concentrating too much on Formula One, and not noticing how fast and uncontrollable the rally cars had become. Toivonen's Lancia Delta S4 could accelerate from 0-60 mph (96 kmh) in 2.3 seconds, on a gravel road. A FISA investigation, later proved, that drivers' reactions were indeed too slow to keep up with the speed of the Group B cars. Drivers' eyes could not adjust their focus between the fast corners, which resulted in tunnel vision. However, due to the high speed of the cars, rallying was more popular among spectators than ever. FISA had to face criticism also for overreacting to Toivonen's accident. John Davenport, former rally driver and author of The Complete Book of the World Rally Championship, claimed in 2004 that "Group B could have been tamed. They were only unsafe in so much as the fuel system, which caused Toivonen's death, and the crowd control needed changing – it wasn't the actual cars." Group B cars have been described as "too fast to race."

Toivonen's car at the Tour de Corse carried number four. A year earlier, Attilio Bettega carried the same number at the same rally at the exact same date and also died in an accident. The number was subsequently banned from cars in the Tour de Corse until it reappeared in the 1997 event. The rally has since proved to be a tricky venue. During the 1997 event, Tommi Mäkinen hit a cow at 150 kilometres per hour. His Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IV plunged into a ravine and rolled 50 metres down a slope. Although the car was completely wrecked, both Mäkinen and his co-driver Seppo Harjanne were unharmed. The incident, however, brought back memories from Toivonen's accident. Mäkinen had another bad accident in 2001, when he crashed his then-new Mitsubishi into a mountain badly injuring his co-driver Risto Mannisenmäki. However, Toivonen's death is still the last fatality for drivers in the World Rally Championship.

Legacy

Toivonen was known as a competitive driver both on gravel and tarmac surfaces, as he started in circuit racing and found it difficult to choose between circuits and rallying. After becoming a rally driver, he still raced in some circuit racing events, competing successfully in two World Endurance Championship events and also in a few races for Eddie Jordan's British Formula Three Championship team. Jordan called Toivonen's performances "incredible" and compared him to Ayrton Senna. After Toivonen's death, Jordan weighed in on his chances in Formula One:

"I don't know if he would have become a champion in Formula One. It always takes a lot of luck, too, and now afterwards one can doubt if he would have been granted that. But he would have won Grands Prix – for that I'm absolutely sure." ("En tiedä, olisiko hänestä tullut formula ykkösissä maailmanmestaria. Siihen tarvitaan aina paljon onneakin ja näin jälkikäteen voi epäillä, että sitä hänelle ei ehkä ollut suotu. Mutta GP-kisoja hän olisi voittanut – siitä olen täysin varma.")

During his World Rally Championship career, Toivonen competed in 40 world rallies, gathering three wins, 11 podium places, 183 stage wins and retiring 22 times. He died at the peak of his career, leading the championship and the Tour de Corse. With only wins and retirements in the last seven rallies, he seemed invincible in the Lancia Delta S4, after finally finding a car that is both competitive and suitable for his driving style. However, Toivonen admitted having problems with the car: "I may have won the RAC Rally with Lancia, but I just did not know how to drive it. It seemed to have a mind of its own." Lancia team boss, Cesare Fiorio, later claimed that Toivonen was the only driver who could really control the Delta S4.

In a Henri Toivonen obituary, titled Rebel With a Cause, published in Motor five days after Toivonen's fatal accident, rally author Martin Holmes named him a "rebel driver", and proof that young drivers can be successful in rallying, a sport which had previously been dominated by older, more experienced drivers. However, Toivonen could not achieve the necessary level of consistency to avoid a number of high speed accidents. Prior to the introduction of the Delta S4, he was known for his ability to make up large amounts of time in single stages. This led to a number of stage wins but also to several bad accidents resulting from driving mistakes. Toivonen's career almost ended in early 1985, when he was nearly paralysed due to an accident at the Costa Smeralda Rally. 1985 would have been his first full WRC season. Toivonen never did get to drive a full season and the closest one to it was 1981, when he competed in seven out of the 12 rounds. The World Rally Archive's Hall of Fame now names him an "icon for the one of the most controversial periods of rallying."

File:Race of Champions.jpg

2005 Race of Champions at the Stade de France.

Toivonen was buried in Espoo, where his family moved from Jyväskylä when Toivonen was still very young. In Corsica, a marble slab dedicated to him and Sergio Cresto was placed at the curve where Toivonen drove out. The memorial place always has an unopened bottle of Martini, which is a reference to Toivonen's Martini-sponsored teams; Martini Racing and Lancia Martini. A local resident puts new flowers by the slab every day. In 1988, former rally driver and arguably the most successful female race car driver in history, Michèle Mouton organised the first Race of Champions to commemorate the death of Henri Toivonen. Race of Champions was originally restricted to rally drivers, but has since become even more popular with the introduction of Formula One and NASCAR stars. The Henri Toivonen Memorial Trophy is still awarded to the winner of the individual event every year. Another trophy bearing Toivonen's name was the Henri Toivonen Grand Attack Trophy, which was awarded by Peugeot's Rally Challenge, organised by Des O'Dell, "to the driver who most embodied the spirit shown by the young Finn." In 2006, Toivonen was honoured at the Neste Oil Rally Finland. An exhibition in memory of him was opened on August 17 in the Rally HQ Jyväskylä Paviljonki. The interviewing event was attended by his former team mate Markku Alén, former co-driver Juha Piironen, current Ford factory team boss Malcolm Wilson and his brother Harri Toivonen. Harri Toivonen quit his racing career in 2002, ending the 40-year racing history of the Toivonen family.