The old-school ‘flying finn’ rally driver Pentti Airikkala passed away on September 30, 2009. Rest in Peace.

Pentti was involved in the development of the Vauxhall Chevette HSR, he was agains sequential gearboxes, saying it made things too easy and he couldn’t shift straightly from 5th to 2nd.
More importantly, he is the father of left foot braking.

He once stated tht Group B rallying didn’t come to an end because of the tragic accidents of Joaquim Santos and Henri Toivonen, but rather because Formula 1 was loosing fans to WRC. He also said rallying surpassed F1 in specularity and in some cases… speed!

There’s a few videos on the internet, but here’s a tribuet video made very recently.

He founded a racing school near Oxfordshire called Left Foot Braking (http://www.leftfootbraking.com/) after his retirement in the 90′s.

You can find more about this and sometimes controverse rally legend on the following websites:

http://www.juwra.com/airikkala_pentti.html
http://pentti-airikkala.gonetoosoon.org/

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