Sami Pajari admitted he had not realised he had made WRC history by winning Rally Paraguay, as well as put the Toyota driver firmly in the hunt for a maiden World Rally Championship title.
Pajari and co-driver Marko Salminen came through one of the most attritional rallies in recent memory to become the first crew in WRC history to claim their first three WRC wins back-to-back.
The Finnish pairing are enjoying an incredible run of form having finished inside the top seven in 10 of the past 11 rounds, including three wins and eight podiums.
After taking wins in Estonia, Finland and now Paraguay, Pajari is only 20 points behind long-time championship leader Elfyn Evans with three rounds of the season remaining.
When asked about the history-making achievement, Pajari told Autosport.com: “It means a lot. It’s really special.
“Someone told me that nobody has ever done it before so it makes it really special. You really need to stop and realise [I have done that]. This is so amazing of course I feel happy. I feel happy for the points we got once again. We are going well in the championship fight and I’m happy for that, that’s quite obvious. But it was a really demanding rally already on Thursday and on Friday we had a small issue [water leak] and it took a while to find what was wrong and fix it and so on.”
Sami Pajari, Marko Salminen, Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT2 Toyota GR Yaris Rally1
Photo by: Toyota Racing
Pajari felt the Paraguay victory required a different approach from his wins in Estonia and Finland, with tyre and gap management taking precedence over outright speed.
“But then after that, the car was really reliable and the performance was on top. But still, it was not only about being flat out from start to finish, which is quite different compared to Estonia, Finland. Here you just need to manage. I was in the lead and needed to manage the gap and your tyres, and many things. I tried to be clever with my driving and now when you look back and it looks like that is exactly what we did.”
The 24-year-old will head to Chile in two weeks’ time with the thought of winning a maiden world title a realistic prospect, but is not letting himself get too carried away by his recent success.
“It [the title race] is on but I will keep on doing the best I can. I’m not saying that it is going to be easy or anything and not putting too much focus on winning [the title],” he added.
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– The Autosport.com Team
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