Pajari claimed the WRC2 championship last weekend in Japan. After the event, the Finnish driver announced that his partnership with co-driver Enni Mälkönen would not continue into next season.
On Monday, it was revealed that Toyota has signed Pajari as a full-season driver in a Rally1 car for next year. However, Pajari has not yet disclosed the identity of his next co-driver.
The decision to part ways with Mälkönen has sparked heated debate, particularly after Mälkönen revealed on Instagram that the decision was not hers and that she would have preferred to continue the partnership.
Read also: Shocking decision caught co-driver Enni Mälkönen off guard – Sami Pajari comments on the hot topic
Social media and forums have been rife with speculation about whether Toyota’s WRC team influenced Pajari’s decision. Was it because Toyota wanted Pajari to have a more experienced co-driver now that the young Finn is stepping into the top class?
Toyota team principal Jari-Matti Latvala has strongly denied this theory.
“It’s always the driver’s decision. He needs to have the plan and he knows who he needs in the car to support him. So in that sense now Sami has decided that he needs somebody else,” Latvala said, according to DirtFish.
“Of course it’s always a little bit risky choice when you change the co-driver, especially when you have had a very successful season. But it’s a chemistry thing which needs to work between the driver and the co-driver. And as a team, you can never decide who is the co-driver,” Latvala emphasised.
Mälkönen had been Pajari’s co-driver for three years. Before her, Pajari had worked with several other co-drivers.
In 2018, he won the Finnish Junior Championship with his father, Pertti Pajari. In 2019, he secured the SM3 class title of the Finnish Rally Championship with Antti Haapala, and in 2021, he was crowned JWRC Champion with Marko Salminen.
Pajari is no stranger to changing co-drivers. His latest decision was made in collaboration with his team.
“Maybe in different points of your career you need different kind of things and after a really nice result during the last three years, this is something what we have our reasons for and why we decided to do this,” Pajari explained.
