JJ
Lehto

JJ Lehto, whose full name is Jyrki Juhani Järvilehto, was born in Espoo on 31 January 1966. He started karting at the age of eight and moved up to Formula Ford at 15. He was a protégé of Keke Rosberg, the 1982 World Champion, who suggested shortening his name to JJ Lehto. In 1987 he won the British and European Formula 2000 titles, and in 1988 he took the British Formula Three championship with Pacific Racing.

He made his Formula One debut in 1989 for Onyx, standing in for Bertrand Gachot. He failed to prequalify at Estoril but started the next race. In the wet finale at Adelaide he ran as high as fifth before electrical trouble ended his race. He stayed with Onyx for 1990, but the team withdrew after the Hungarian Grand Prix. In 1991 he joined Scuderia Italia, running a Dallara chassis with a Judd engine. He finished third in the wet San Marino Grand Prix, his only podium and the source of his first championship points, and ended the year 12th in the standings. He stayed with the team in 1992, now with Ferrari engines, and finished seventh at Spa, his best result of the year.

In 1993 he partnered Karl Wendlinger at the newly arrived Sauber team. He finished fifth in the team's first race at Kyalami and fourth at Imola. He scored no more points that season and ended it 13th in the standings. For 1994 he won a seat at Benetton alongside Michael Schumacher. After an injury in pre-season testing, Jos Verstappen drove the first two rounds. At the San Marino Grand Prix, Lehto qualified fifth but stalled on the grid and was hit from behind. He scored a point in Canada, drove the Italian and Portuguese rounds in place of the suspended Schumacher, and then drove the last two races for Sauber. In total he made 62 starts.

After Formula One, he raced in the DTM in 1995 and 1996. In 1995 he won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in a McLaren F1 GTR, sharing with Yannick Dalmas and Masanori Sekiya, and he won it again in 2005. He took the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1999 and 2005, and the American Le Mans Series in 2004. He also worked as a Formula One commentator for the Finnish broadcaster MTV3 until 2010.

Source: Wikipedia, “JJ Lehto”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.