Jari Huttunen (born 28 February 1994) is a Finnish rally driver from Kiuruvesi. He currently competes in the World Rally Championship-2, the premier support category of the World Rally Championship, for M-Sport Ford World Rally Team. He gained notoriety in the championship after winning his very first rally in the WRC-2 category, at the 2017 Rally Finland.
Huttunen is the 2020 World Rally Championship-3 champion. He also won the ADAC Opel Rallye Cup in 2016 and the Polish Rally Championship in 2020.
He is managed by two-time World Rally Champion Marcus Grönholm. His current co-driver is Mikko Lukka.
Career
2013–2014
At the age of 19 in 2013, Huttunen decided to retire from go-kart competition and put a primary focus on rallying. He was hired by the AKK Driver Academy, and started in local rallying with a Suzuki Swift. After only achieving 57th place in one rally, Huttunen then switched it out for an Opel Kadett, and took a class win at the Oulujärvi Rally while placing 5th overall. In 2014, Huttunen continued to drive an Opel, but he switched the Kadett out for an Astra. At the Pohjola rally, he recorded 4th place overall, and another class win, which was a major improvement from his 57th place in the year before. Despite middling results, Huttunen obtained enough funding to make his debut in the Finnish Rally Championship. AKK Driver Academy supplied him with a Citroën C2 R2 car at the final two rallies of the 2014 championship. These rallies were his first in FIA-homologated machinery. In the last rally of the season, he scored a podium finish in the junior class.
2015: Breakout years, hired by Printsport & WRC debut
The 2015 season would be his breakout year into the junior categories of rallying in Finland. Still a member of the AKK Academy, Printsport hired Huttunen as a full-time driver in the 2015 Finnish championship in the R2 junior class, driving a Citroën C2 R2, like he did the previous season. Huttunen opened the 2015 season with a podium finish at the Arctic Lapland Rally, his first long-distance event. As the season went forward, Huttunen would go on to take two class wins and two more class podiums. Later on in the season, at Rally Finland, Huttunen would make his World Rally Championship début in the WRC-3 class. He was running in 4th until he crashed in the 2nd leg which forced him to retire for the day. He finished the rally in an unremarkable 8th position. All this did not slow him down however, as by the end of the season he won the SM3 Class of the Finnish Rally Championship, his first regional championship win. With this, he was named "Rally Star of the Future" by the organizers of the Finnish Championship.
2016: Move to the German Championship
After success in his home country, Huttunen entered in the Deutsche Rallye Meisterschaft (German Rally Championship) full-time in the Opel Rallye Cup class, in which all entrants enter a spec Opel Adam. It was in this championship where he really shined. Huttunen would end up winning all rallies in the championship except for one, and thus easily took the Opel Rallye Cup. Huttunen's domination of the German championship meant that he qualified for Opel's Junior Rally Team in the European Rally Championship the following season.