Ari had a frightening accident in Argentina in 1985, and suffered serious injuries. Email. MCD also provided Escorts for Ari to drive in the British series, though by this time it was clear that time had caught up with the Ford, which could now be beaten by the Quattros, the Opel Ascona 400s, and matched by the Vauxhall Chevette HSR. Although Boreham had closed its doors, they kept Ari and Hannu Mikkola under contract, and loaned them to David Sutton’s team, where Rothmans invested in a series of newly-built Escorts. Aarne, a farmer, suffered multiple injuries and died instantly. “Then I remembered all the blood I received in Argentina. The young man from Finland was suddenly on his way to becoming a Ford Superstar. Call him a hero, a phenomenon , the most popular rally driver of all time, and you would be right, every time. Even so, in 1994, when Ford works driver Francois Delecour was injured in a non-rallying accident, Ari returned to Boreham to drive Escort RS Cosworths, taking third place in the Acropolis, and in 1998 he drove an Escort WRC into to third in the Safari, his last podium finish in rallying. FIA Presidential hopeful Ari Vatanen … I was lucky enough to get to know both of them. As far as Boreham was concerned, the apprenticeship had been worth it, and signed up to run a Boreham RS1800 in Scandinavia, works RS1800s in World Championship events, and – where there was time – to drive David Sutton’s Gandy-backed cars in other rallies. Rally driver or European politician. Even co-driver Terry Harryman interrupts his pace notes with an “Dear God!” Watch the whole video, and become a fan like me. The full letter sent by FIA Presidential hopeful Ari Vatanen to outgoing incumbent Max Mosley, in which the Finn accuses the Englishman of 'violating … A bit like Colin McRae, his ability was way beyond his statistics. Ari Vatanen's father died in a car crash while driving his family to a funeral when the future world rally champion was eight years old. It was “all” every time. From there he took part in Ford, Opel, Peugeot, BMW, Mitsubishi and Subaru teams. I read about a Paris-Dakar rider who died after he received blood. For this season Ari was backed up by Pentti Airikkala and Malcolm Wilson, a fleet of new Escorts was developed, and the Rothmans insignia seemed to be everywhere. After three blood transfusions in the Cordoba hospital, he became convinced that he had contracted AIDS, a disease that at the time few people knew much about. Yet with five wins, the Championship was his, spectacularly and memorably. That just made it worse.”. www.kelsey.co.uk, TILT Digital Agency WordPress Designers and Developers in Kent, Ford’s Groovy Transit Clubmobil Prototype, WordPress Designers and Developers in Kent. An eight-hour operation on his knee was successful, but left the Finn with doubts. No ongoing commitment, just a great way of getting three issues of your favourite magazine delivered to your door without having to head out>> https://shop.kelsey.co.uk/promotion/kp1. In Donegal, he not only set fastest times on nearly every stage, but won the three-day event by more than 12 minutes. Not only did Ari win the World Rally Championship for Drivers, but he became the first (and only) one to do it in a non-factory team. For his adoring fans, however, he was married to David Sutton’s magnificent wide-arched Tarmac-spec Escort UYY 256S, soon known as Black Beauty. Every magazine I picked up seemed to have something about AIDS in it. “Jean Todt was a tremendous help,” says Ari. Even so, it was not until years later, when a young Colin McRae joined the team, that Ford’s bodyshell repair bills went even higher. During the 1985 Rally Argentina, he experienced a big crash which took him 18 months to recover and get back into rallying. At the end of the season, no question, he was exhausted, and looked it. I was fortunate enough to be asked to update the English version of his book, Every Second Counts, in 1988, and my brother and I spent three wonderful days pinching ourselves as we sat in his house in Berkshire talking nonsense – and a lot of it talking some extremely serious stuff. It was a season to regret: Ari crashed POO in Portugal, hit a non-competing car with STW in Africa, planted POO head-on into a tree in Greece, a reshelled POO’s clutch exploded in Finland, STW’s ignition system let go in Canada, and he also crashed MTW 200P in San Remo, and rolled STW on the RAC. Yet it didn’t happen. Ari, whose sense of irony was well-developed, loved every minute of it, and soon became the face of Rothmans — for he would be linked with them until he finally moved to Peugeot in 1984. 01959 541444 It was enough for Ford to hire him — first to do the 1000 Lakes (in a Boreham-built RS1600) then in a brand-new RS1800 for the RAC. In 1980, Ari’s spectacularly-liveried Rothmans Escorts were fast, reliable — and always exciting to watch. Between February and November he started eleven events — five of them being World Championship rounds, and five of them British Championship rounds. “For a long time I didn’t know how close to death I had come,” he says. On the stages Ari was spine-chillingly spectacular, always seeming to be hovering on the cusp of a disaster, but mostly keeping his increasingly-battered Escorts on the road. Suddenly, in the second half of the season, the results began to roll in. Tweet. As a motorsport sponge as a kid, you had to have heroes, didn’t you? Couloir de la mort is the phrase uttered by Jean Todt, team manager for Peugeot, when he visited Vatanen in an Argentinian hospital in 1986. “I remembered times drinking tap water on the Safari Rally in Africa, and that’s when the idea I had AIDS really struck,” he adds. For 1978, Ford reduced his programme, cutting his World Championship programme to just four events (he retired three times), letting him concentrate on events in Scandinavia and Europe. Read the full story behind the genius of Ari Vatanen in the March 2017 issue, Click here for more Classic Ford features, Get the next three issues of Classic Ford for just £9.99! That is why everyone adored him. Peugeot had signed Vatanen to a works contract in 1984, for its new all-wheel-drive 205 T16 – one of the greatest Group B cars. LONDON: Ari Vatanen's father died in a car crash while driving his family to a funeral when the future world rally champion was eight years old. LONDON, April 26 (Reuters) - Ari Vatanen's father died in a car crash while driving his family to a funeral when the future world rally champion was eight years old. I was all F1…. Ari Vatanen Manx Rally 1982 Ford Escort Mk2 RS1800 - YouTube On this day: Born April 27, 1952. Here’s why. Motorsport Retro is a premium website that celebrates motorsport culture. He returned with Peugeot and a full-on assault at Pikes Peak, winning it spectacularly, and also the Paris-Dakar, an adventure he loved. https://www.google.fr/maps/@42.3476231,9.4947488,3a,75y,8.41h,78.08t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sOkjhFcyCXfqkJZdupvRrwA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=fr In the end Ari wrote it off for us on the Castrol 76 rally’. Please subscribe or login to view this exclusive content. To sign up to our newsletter, please fill in your details below. But still it wasn’t his year, for his engine let go in the 1000 Lakes, yet again he went off the road in the Castrol 78, and he was excluded for missing a passage control in the RAC. Having won the Arctic rally in POO 489R, Ari didn’t finish another works International event all season! Even so, by comparison with 1976, the 1977 season was almost a washout. Then came the Rothmans years of 1980 and 1981. Leave this field blank . Photography by McKlein Image Database. “I began to worry if I had cancer. When leaving in 1982, Ari was quoted as saying, very graciously, that: ‘It will be strange not driving a Ford, because since I joined them seven years ago, I have driven nothing else…’. Rallying just one hard-worked RS1800 — LAR 801P — he dominated the RAC Championship, with his victories, and his exciting antics. In spite of the occasional high-speed crash, Ari won the Acropolis and Welsh rallies, and recorded seven second places. Not only because he was super-fast, and seemingly quite fearless, but for the way that he always made himself available for interviews, appearances, chats with the fans — he was, in every possible way, the people’s hero. The Granary, Downs Court For six stages he led the 1000 Lakes, then crashed out — a trick he repeated on the RAC, though that was on the second morning…. He needed three liters of blood on the way to hospital in Cordoba. Even after he retired from active driving, he never lost touch with the sport, or his legion of fans, colleagues and friends. Because Boreham had plenty of drivers — Roger Clark and Bjorn Waldegard were heading the team — many suggested that Ari would be cut adrift, as too crash-prone, and too immature. Third in New Zealand, second in the 1000 Lakes , third in Canada (Quebec), a great win in Cyprus, and a solid fourth on the RAC — all in Rothmans-coloured cars — was encouraging. Ari, now approaching rallying maturity, captivated everyone by the sheer commitment of his driving — and the results poured in. The helicopter was following the first Peugeot in the road (that was Salonen) The helicopter came to the accidente in about 40 minutes....Many pictures of this accident I have sent to Ari.When Ari returned to Argentina and in Villa Carlos Paz City, many years later, we met again y could talked y tell him al about this accidente.At this time were his wife Rita y Salonen’s wife.We talked about an hour.It was great to … Vatanen suffered eight broken ribs, crushed rib cage, fractured vertebrae, punctured lung and a broken ankle and knee. Kent, ME18 6AL “Through everything at the time he said should I compete again, he would provide a car.”. If you were anyone like me, your heroes were spectacular, yet never World Champions: Ronnie Peterson, Gilles Villeneuve, Tom Pryce. Peter Ashcroft still believed totally, in his protégé, and was sure that one day, it would all pay off. The Finn’s spectacular ways won him the 1981 World Rally Championship, and won me as a huge fan as a teen. Ari Vatanen, to me, is still the guy that made a car go sideways, and got me interested in rallying. In those years, of course, not only did he compete, and win, for Opel, Peugeot, Mitsubishi and Subaru (he won five World rallies in succession in 1984/1985 with the Group B Peugeot 205 T16), but he was so nearly killed in a high-speed accident in Argentina, fought his way back to health, turned to Paris-Dakar Raid rallies with huge success (he won no fewer than four times), and also took up a European Parliament politician’s career. The stronger I became physically, the stronger my fears grew. Somehow he took part in 10 World Championship events without becoming totally exhausted, winning three of them — Acropolis, Brazil and Argentina — and taking second place on the Swedish and RAC. Be honest! Anyone who goes through a cattle grid flat-out, with a flat tyre having just scraped the wall and barely a lift gets my vote – see the video 1min 50. There were — and still are — many public appearances, when queues for his autographs, or selfies, are usually swamped by the crowds. https://www.youtube.com/user/zXzrally http://video.zxz.cba.pl/ http://rajdy-klasyfikacje.cba.pl/ Early in 1982 he took second place in Sweden (David Sutton had repainted one of the old Rothmans cars), while in Finland he drove Geoff Fielding’s MCD Escort, but the engine blew. Apr ‘21 07. Miraculously, Vatanen survived relatively unscathed, as did the other family members in the … “I had swollen glands in my throat and a hoarse voice from the tubes during his operations,” he says. “End of an era” – Vatanen’s tribute to Sutton and Mikkola. “All or nothing” doesn’t even come in to it. LONDON: Ari Vatanen’s father died in a car crash while driving his family to a funeral when the future world rally champion was eight years old. By signing up to the newsletter you agree to receive emails from crash.net that may occasionally include promotional content . Did you ever see him drive an Escort – close your eyes, and visualise the sight, the sound, the sheer drama. We’re already looking forward to the next time we see him. It was remarkable, and would get even better in 1981. Ari Vatanen & Peugeot 405 T16 B-group rally car. His healing became complicated. My brother alerted me to another new hero, when he taught me about rallying and Ari Vatanen, a Finn and an accident waiting to happen but never seemed to. Then came the anti-climax. This was a year, too, in which he also won the Tour of Britain, which ran to Group 1 regulations, in an RS2000. The vehicle was new and although seatbelts were optional he had fitted them only the day before but was not using one. Famous as much for his early crashes behind the wheel of works Escorts as much as his wins, Ari Vatanen was, and still is, a firm favourite with rally fans. The Genius Of Ari Vatanen 17th May 2020 Famous as much for his early crashes behind the wheel of works Escorts as much as his wins, Ari Vatanen was, and still is, a firm favourite with rally fans. How is that Ford fans still worship this man — the star who crashed more Escorts than any other works driver of this period? What is the Ari Vatanen mystique? Ari had a frightening accident in Argentina in 1985, and suffered serious injuries. Share. Sutton maintained a fleet of 10 cars — and Ari started 12 times. He had, it transpired, also got the day wrong and the funeral had already happened. Do you remember the way that Ari Vatanen burst on to the 1975 British rally scene in a battered old Opel Ascona? Then came 1979, the forging of his in-car partnership with David Richards, and the start of his love affair with the cigarette company, Rothmans. Then, in October, the news that all Ford fans had been dreading, broke — Rothmans, its links with Opel tighter than ever, had attracted him to drive for the German team in 1983, and except for one-off appearances in Sierra RS Cosworth in Finland (1987 and 1991), he would not be seen again in a works Ford until 1994, when in the autumn of his years. Worse, while he was recovering from the multiple bone breaks (cervical vertabrea, crushed knee, eight ribs and smashed ankle) he became depressed. It would not be long before their ambitions spread, they picked the blond, non-smoking Finn as their next hero, and started to build him up for the future. The Finn was drifting between life and death after a horrific accident. Even so, his pace electrified Ford’s Peter Ashcroft, who immediately signed him up as Boreham’s apprentice rally driver. During the year the Allied Polymer-sponsored car had many off-road excursions that inflicted body damage. The doctors warned his wife Rita that despite the operations the physical recovery was only just beginning. Ari, still linked to Ford, stayed on for a further season, spending time test driving the RS1700T, and occasionally appearing in privately-prepared Escorts. Ari’s father, Aarne, braked as hard as he could but was unable to prevent a head-on collision. As ace-mechanic Mick Jones once told me: ‘We were so busy that we never had the chance to re-shell the damned thing — we just kept patching it up. The 1981 WRC champion remembers his team boss and one of his closest rivals - two names the rallying world has lost in 2021 . And for why? Sign up for our free weekly email newsletter. Worse, while he was recovering from the multiple bone breaks (cervical vertabrea, crushed knee, eight ribs and smashed ankle) he became depressed. Words by David Evans, DirtFish Senior Staff Writer. The depression lasted, and only a few people knew of the torment he was experiencing. In 1988 he was leading the Dakar comfortably when his car was stolen overnight in the Malian capital Bamako. On the other hand, he won the Mintex and the Scottish in a Sutton Escort, was second on the Welsh, crashed a Ford of New Zealand RS1800 in New Zealand but still managed to finish second, and won two other Finnish-Championship rounds. 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