at the 1978
1000 Lakes Rally Vatanen's debut year in rallying was 1970, and he debuted in the
World Rally Championship at the 1974
1000 Lakes Rally. In that year he won the Nortti Rally in an
Opel Ascona, beating
Hannu Mikkola in the process, which brought him to wider attention. His first international rally was the 1975 Rothmans 747 Rally in Jamaica driving a Datsun 120Y. He placed 12th with co-driver Gerry Phillips. At the end of that season he was offered his first professional drive, in a
Ford Escort RS1800, on the RAC Rally. He crashed out on the second day, but by then he had impressed Ford team manager Stuart Turner enough to be offered a seat in the team for the
British Rally Championship the following year. In the 1976 Scottish Rally (part of the British Rally Championship), the Ford works team replaced a broken differential in Ari Vatanen's Mk2 Escort RS 1800 with one they removed from a spectator's Ford Capri. The change was caught on film in a documentary of the event, a copy of which is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02RaQAvzMps, from 21 minutes to 25 minutes in.. Vatanen did not finish the Scottish Rally, but he won the championship, a feat he repeated in 1980, co-driven by
David Richards, who later became chairman of
Prodrive. Between 1977 and 1980, Vatanen also competed in selected World Championship events, initially for the official Ford team and then, after its withdrawal from the sport at the end of 1979, for the semi-private
Rothmans Rally Team. He took his debut win at the 1980
Acropolis Rally and became the
World Rally Champion in
1981. Vatanen and Richards parted ways for the 1982 season, and for the next few years Vatanen was co-driven by Terry Harryman. He did not defend his world title in 1982, competing instead in the British Championship in a Ford Escort, before moving to the
Opel team for 1983. The Opel Ascona and
Opel Manta were only two-wheel-drive and not fully competitive, but Vatanen still won the
Safari Rally. In
1984, Vatanen signed to drive the
Peugeot 205 T16 for Peugeot's factory team. From the 1984 1000 Lakes Rally to
1985 Swedish Rally, Vatanen won five world rallies in a row. He was tipped to win the 1985 world title, but at mid-season was trailing his teammate
Timo Salonen after a series of accidents and mechanical problems. He then had a serious accident on the
Rally Argentina, when his car somersaulted at over . His seat broke, and he was thrown around inside the car, suffering severe injuries to his legs and torso and life-threatening internal bleeding. He spent 18 months recovering first from his physical injuries, and then from severe depression. He went on to make a complete recovery and his return to motorsport in 1987 saw him go on to win the
Paris-Dakar Rally four times; with
Peugeot in 1987, 1989 and 1990, and with
Citroën in 1991. He became the centre of controversy when his car was stolen whilst leading the same rally in 1988. In 1997 he won the
FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies with a
Citroën ZX Rallye-raid alongside navigator
Fred Gallagher (co-driver). With Peugeot, Vatanen also won the
Pikes Peak International Hillclimb, after Peugeot stopped participating in the World Rally Championship in 1986, due to the demise of
Group B rallying. Peugeot used the lessons learnt from its 205 T16 to create the 405 T16. With at least , large aerofoils, four-wheel drive and four-wheel steering, Vatanen took the car up the hill in record time, his efforts being captured in the award-winning short film
Climb Dance. Vatanen continued competing in the World Rally Championship until the
1998 season. He drove for
Mitsubishi Ralliart Europe in four events in
1989 and in five events in
1990. His best result with the
Mitsubishi Galant VR-4 was second at the 1990 1000 Lakes Rally. From
1992 to
1993, he competed for
Subaru in 11 events, finishing second three times, including on the debut event of the first Subaru Impreza in Finland. Vatanen briefly led the event before being overhauled by eventual winner
Juha Kankkunen. Even so, he was dropped by the Subaru team at the end of the 1993 season in favour of
Carlos Sainz. The following year he returned to the wheel of a Ford, driving the
Ford Escort RS Cosworth for a semi-private team, and then being co-opted into the Ford factory team where he stood in for the injured
Francois Delecour. He scored a podium finish on Rally Argentina, the first time he had contested the event since his accident there nine years previously. From 1995, Vatanen competed less frequently. He scored a podium finish at the 1998
Safari Rally, and then briefly returned to a works Subaru for the season-ending
Rally of Great Britain, marking his 100th World Rally Championship event. Vatanen joined
Nissan in the Paris-Dakar in 2003, finishing seventh. He also made an appearance at the 2003 Rally Finland with a
Bozian Racing-prepared
Peugeot 206 WRC, finishing eleventh. In 2004 and 2005, he drove the Dakar for Nissan, and in 2007 he made another attempt with
Volkswagen, but retired on the seventh stage after a fire destroyed his car. In September 2008, Vatanen took part in the
Colin McRae Forest Stages Rally, a round of the
Scottish Rally Championship centred in
Perth in Scotland. His co-driver was once again
David Richards and they competed in the same
Rothmans sponsored
Ford Escort RS1800 that they drove in 1981. He was one of a number of ex-world champions to take part in the event in memory of McRae, who died in 2007. ==Personal life==