Tommi Antero Mäkinen (; born 26 June 1964) is a Finnish racing executive and former driver. Mäkinen is one of the most successful WRC drivers of all time, ranking fifth in rally wins (24) and third in championships (4), tied with

Juha Kankkunen Juha Matti Pellervo Kankkunen (; born 2 April 1959) is a Finnish former rally driver. His factory team career in the World Rally Championship lasted from 1983 to 2002. He won 23 world rallies and four drivers' world championship titles, which we ...

behind

Sébastien Ogier Sébastien Ogier (born 17 December 1983) is a French rally driver, competing for the Toyota Gazoo Racing Team in the World Rally Championship (WRC), who is teamed with the co-driver Julien Ingrassia. He has won the World Rally Drivers' Champion ...

(8) and

Sébastien Loeb Sébastien Loeb (; born 26 February 1974) is a French professional rallying, rally, auto racing, racing and rallycross driver. He is the most successful driver in the World Rally Championship (WRC), having won the world championship a record nin ...

(9). In 2018, as a head of

Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT is a World Rally Championship (WRC) team based in Finland that serves as Toyota's official factory team. Its team principal is former WRC driver Jari-Matti Latvala. The team made its début during the 2017 season, where i ...

, he became the first person in the history of rally driving to win a

Championship In sport, a championship is a competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion. Championship systems Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship. Title match system In this system ...

both as a driver and as a team principal. He is a four-time World Rally

Champion A champion (from the late Latin ''campio'') is the victor in a challenge, contest or competition. There can be a territorial pyramid of championships, e.g. local, regional / provincial, state, national, continental and world championships, an ...

, a series he first won, and then successfully defended, continuously throughout

1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A Centennial Olympic Park bombing, bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical Anti-abortion violence, anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 8 ...

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...

, 1998 and

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shootin ...

, on all occasions driving the

Ralliart Ralliart is the high-performance and motorsports division of Mitsubishi Motors. It was responsible for development and preparation of the company's rally racing and off-road racing vehicles, as well as the development of high-performance models ...

Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution The Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, popularly referred to as the 'Evo', is a sports sedan and rally car based on the Lancer that was manufactured by Japanese manufacturer Mitsubishi Motors from 1992 until 2016. There have been ten official versio ...

. He also aided Mitsubishi to the 1998 world constructors' title as well as winning the 2000

Race of Champions The Race of Champions (ROC) is an international motorsport event held at the end/start of each year, featuring some of the world's best racing and rally drivers. It is the only competition in the world where stars from Formula One, World Ral ...

. Mäkinen's navigators include compatriots

Seppo Harjanne Seppo Harjanne (born 20 February 1948) is a Finnish former rally co-driver. He is best known for co-driving for Timo Salonen from 1979 to 1988 and for Tommi Mäkinen from 1990 to 1997. With Salonen, Harjanne took ten World Rally Championship vic ...

Kaj Lindström Kaj Lindström (born 31 July 1969) is a Finnish sporting director, who worked for Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT. Prior to this position, he was a rally co-driver A co-driver is the navigator of a rally car in the sport of rallying, who sits in the f ...

and

Risto Mannisenmäki Risto Mannisenmäki (born on 28 May 1959) is a former rally co-driver and two-times world champion with driver Tommi Mäkinen. Career Mannisenmäki begun his career in 1982 and was co-driving for various drivers such as Tommi Mäkinen, Sebastia ...

, the former retiring from alongside Mäkinen having previously served

1985 The year 1985 was designated as the International Youth Year by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 ** The Internet's Domain Name System is created. ** Greenland withdraws from the European Economic Community as a result of a ...

champion, and fellow "

Flying Finn "The Flying Finn" ( fi, Lentävä suomalainen, sv, Flygande finländaren) is a nickname given to several Finnish athletes who were noted for their speed. Originally, it was given to several Finnish middle and long-distance runners. The term w ...

Peugeot Peugeot (, , ) is a French brand of automobiles owned by Stellantis. The family business that preceded the current Peugeot companies was founded in 1810, with a steel foundry that soon started making hand tools and kitchen equipment, and the ...

Timo Salonen Timo Salonen (born October 8, 1951) is a Finnish former rally driver who won the 1985 World Rally Championship season for Peugeot. It was commented of him that he stood out from other drivers, because he was overweight, wore thick glasses and smok ...

Career

Mäkinen won the

Group N In relation to international motorsport governed by the FIA, Group N refers to regulations providing 'standard' large scale series production vehicles for competition. They are limited in terms of modifications permitted to the standard specific ...

Finnish Rally Championship The Finnish Rally Championship is the national rally championship in Finland. The series currently has four classes; Super4 (including R5, S2000 and old WRC cars), Production4 (including Group N cars), R2 (including R2 and R1 cars) and Super2 (in ...

driving a

Lancia Delta HF 4WD The Lancia Delta is a small family car produced by Italian automobile manufacturer Lancia in three generations. The first generation (1979-1994) debuted at the 1979 Frankfurt Motor Show, the second generation (1993-1999) debuted at the 1993 Gene ...

in 1988. Mäkinen's first world rally win came on the

1994 File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which Sinking of the MS Estonia, sank in ...

1000 Lakes Rally Rally Finland (formerly known as the Neste Rally Finland, Neste Oil Rally Finland, 1000 Lakes Rally and Rally of the Thousand Lakes; fi, Suomen ralli, sv, Finska rallyt) is a rally competition in the Finnish Lakeland in Central Finland. The ra ...

(now

Rally Finland Rally Finland (formerly known as the Neste Rally Finland, Neste Oil Rally Finland, 1000 Lakes Rally and Rally of the Thousand Lakes; fi, Suomen ralli, sv, Finska rallyt) is a rally competition in the Finnish Lakeland in Central Finland. The ra ...

), in a

Ford Escort RS Cosworth The Ford Escort RS Cosworth is a rally version homologation special of the fifth generation European Ford Escort. It was designed to qualify as a Group A car for the World Rally Championship, in which it competed between 1993 and 1998. It was ...

. Mäkinen proved a late developer by the standards of some in rallying circles, only nabbing his first full-time manufacturer seat in a

Group A Group A is a set of motorsport regulations administered by the FIA covering production derived vehicles intended for competition, usually in touring car racing and rallying. In contrast to the short-lived Group B and Group C, Group A vehicles w ...

formula Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution alongside former Group A rally champion Swede

Kenneth Eriksson Kenneth Eriksson (born 13 May 1956 in Äppelbo, in the kommun of Vansbro) is a now retired World Rally Championship rally driver. He drove for several manufacturer teams, including the Subaru World Rally Team, Mitsubishi, Hyundai and Škoda. He ...

, in

1995 File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is O. J. Simpson murder case, acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the 1994, year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The ...

- but success was to prove spontaneous thereafter. A cultured

Safari Rally The Safari Rally is a rally held in Kenya. It was first held in 1953 as a celebration of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The event was part of the World Rally Championship from 1973 until 2002, before returning in 2021. It is historically r ...

win in 1996 proved the platform on which to build a dominant championship lead, which he consolidated by taking the title in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, away from runner-up,

Subaru ( or ; ) is the automaker, automobile manufacturing division of Japanese transportation conglomerate (company), conglomerate Subaru Corporation (formerly known as Fuji Heavy Industries), the Automotive industry#By manufacturer, twenty-first ...

Colin McRae Colin Steele McRae, (5 August 1968 – 15 September 2007) was a Scottish rally driver. He was the 1991 and 1992 British Rally Champion, and in 1995 became the first British driver and the youngest person to win the World Rally Championship ...

- a long-time rival. He proceeded to win every drivers' title for Mitsubishi from 1996 to 1999. The Mitsubishi team, with the Finn and young

Briton British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies.: British nationality law governs mod ...

Richard Burns Richard Alexander Burns (17 January 1971 – 25 November 2005) was an English rally driver who won the 2001 World Rally Championship, having previously finished runner-up in the series in 1999 and 2000. He also helped Mitsubishi to the world ...

among its driver personnel, also won its sole manufacturers' championship in 1998, while late that same year, the licensed Tommi Mäkinen Rally

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

was also released. In

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from ...

, despite opening his campaign with victory on the January

Monte Carlo Rally The Monte Carlo Rally or Rallye Monte-Carlo (officially ''Rallye Automobile de Monte-Carlo'') is a rallying event organised each year by the Automobile Club de Monaco. The rally now takes place along the French Riviera in Monaco and southeast ...

, Mäkinen finally relinquished his grasp on the title, being beaten in the standings by new title holder and fellow Finn,

Marcus Grönholm Marcus Ulf Johan Grönholm (born February 5, 1968) is a Finnish former rally and rallycross driver, being part of a family of the Swedish-speaking population of Finland lineage. His son, Niclas Grönholm, is an upcoming FIA World Rallycross Cha ...

. That year Mitsubishi produced a 'Tommi Mäkinen edition' of the road version of the

Lancer Evolution The Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, popularly referred to as the 'Evo', is a sports sedan and rally car based on the Lancer that was manufactured by Japanese manufacturer Mitsubishi Motors from 1992 until 2016. There have been ten official versi ...

VI to commemorate his previous title successes. This car had a different front bumper than the regular Evolution VI, while some models also featured a red and white paint job to closely resemble Mäkinen's rally car. Ss1 7tm

Mäkinen remained with Mitsubishi until the end of the

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a Participants in ...

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and pol ...

, having finished third in that year's standings behind Burns and McRae, by now respectively drivers for Subaru and

Ford Ford commonly refers to: * Ford Motor Company, an automobile manufacturer founded by Henry Ford * Ford (crossing), a shallow crossing on a river Ford may also refer to: Ford Motor Company * Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company * Ford F ...

- but not before the inauspicious introduction of team's first ever

World Rally Car A World Rally Car is a racing automobile built to the specific regulations set by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) and designed for competition in the World Rally Championship (WRC). The cars were introduced in 1997 as a repl ...

on the

San Remo Rally Rallye Sanremo is a rally competition held in Sanremo, Italy. Except for the 1995 event, the event was part of the FIA World Rally Championship schedule from the 1973 season to the 2003 season. Currently, it is a round of the Intercontinental Rall ...

. Mäkinen and teammate

Freddy Loix Freddy Loix (born 10 November 1970) is a Belgian rally driver. Career Loix's career in motor sport began in karting at the age of 15. In 1990, he bought his first rally car, a Lancia Delta group N, though he soon progressed to a Mitsubishi Gal ...

struggled with the car before the Finn's crash on the mountainside roads of the following round in

Corsica Corsica ( , Upper , Southern ; it, Corsica; ; french: Corse ; lij, Còrsega; sc, Còssiga) is an island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 18 regions of France. It is the fourth-largest island in the Mediterranean and lies southeast of ...

was responsible for breaking co-driver Mannisenmäki's back and in doing so, virtually ended his top-line career. The Finn was forced to fare with substitute co-drivers for the remaining events in Australia (with Timo Hantunen) and

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

, the latter of which he retired from, helping Burns to claim the championship. Tommi Mäkinen in Subaru, Deutschland 2002

A move to the

Prodrive Prodrive is a British motorsport and advanced engineering group based in Banbury, Oxfordshire, England. It designs, constructs and races automobile, cars for companies and teams such as Aston Martin, Bahrain Raid Xtreme and Team X44. Its advan ...

-run

Subaru World Rally Team The Subaru World Rally Team (SWRT) was Subaru's World Rally Championship (WRC) team. It used a distinctive blue with yellow colour scheme that is a throwback to the sponsorship deal with State Express 555, a BAT cigarette brand popular in Asia. ...

for

2002 File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains East Timor independence, indepe ...

as replacement for Burns (who had chosen to drive a works

Peugeot 206 WRC The Peugeot 206 WRC is a World Rally Car based on the Peugeot 206. It was used by Peugeot Sport, Peugeot's factory team, in the World Rally Championship from 1999 to 2003. The car brought Peugeot the manufacturers' world title three years in a ro ...

alongside Grönholm for his title defence) yielded one more, final career victory, on the 2002 Monte Carlo Rally where a technical infringement committed by on-the-road winner, and emerging talent,

, allowed Mäkinen to upstage the

Frenchman The French people (french: Français) are an ethnic group and nation primarily located in Western Europe that share a common French culture, history, and language, identified with the country of France. The French people, especially th ...

. But his form then took a dive and he was not to add again to his tally of world titles. He retired from the sport after the

2003 season 3 (three) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 2 and preceding 4, and is the smallest odd prime number and the only prime preceding a square number. It has religious or cultural significance in many societie ...

, ending his WRC career on the podium with third place on that seasons final rally, Rally Great Britain. In 2004 he established his own company named ''Tommi Mäkinen Racing Oy Ltd'' with the aim to prepare rally cars and provide support to drivers. In 2016, Mäkinen became the team principal of the

Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota Gazoo Racing (or Toyota GR/TGR) is a motorsport/performance brand of the Japanese automaker Toyota. Many divisions in various racing disciplines use the branding, including Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT, Toyota's World Rally Championship te ...

, which is the factory team of Toyota and competes in the

World Rally Championship The World Rally Championship (abbreviated as WRC) is the highest level of global competition in the motorsport discipline of rallying, owned and governed by the FIA. There are separate championships for drivers, co-drivers, manufacturers and t ...

(WRC). In 2018, the team managed to win the World Rally Championship earning

Toyota is a Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi, Japan. It was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda and incorporated on . Toyota is one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world, producing about 10 ...

their first manufacturers' title since

Personal life

Mäkinen was born in Puuppola, near

Jyväskylä Jyväskylä () is a city and municipality in Finland in the western part of the Finnish Lakeland. It is located about 150 km north-east from Tampere, the third largest city in Finland; and about 270 km north from Helsinki, the capital of ...

, Finland. From 1999, he has lived in both

Monaco Monaco (; ), officially the Principality of Monaco (french: Principauté de Monaco; Ligurian: ; oc, Principat de Mónegue), is a sovereign city-state and microstate on the French Riviera a few kilometres west of the Italian region of Lig ...

and

. He is married, with two children.

WRC victories

WRC results

WRC summary

References

External links

Tommi Mäkinen Racing Ltd.Toyota Gazoo Razing
{{DEFAULTSORT:Makinen, Tommi 1964 births Living people Finnish racing drivers Finnish rally drivers World Rally Champions World Rally Championship drivers World Rally Championship people Finnish expatriates in Monaco Nismo drivers