How did I become a co-driver?

Short answer is that my brother had been rallying for a few years, needed a co-driver and asked if was interested. Of course I said yes! Some people end up being a co-driver if they have an enthusiastic friend who wants to drive his/hers first rally and just needs someone to sit on the passenger seat. I would say that my path was a little bit longer than that.

I don't have any relatives or friends who have been rallying or racing cars. Although I have had the chance to drive snow mobiles and dirt bikes when I was young. I also spent lots of hours watching Finland's WRC rallies from the 80's or UK's WRC rallies from the same era on video tapes as a kid. One might say that I was quite interested in motor racing, but I didn't think I would have a chance to actually try rallying. In 2007 my brother had been rallying as a hobby for a few years and when I started working after university he asked if I was interested in co-driving. He needed someone who would take the co-driver duties seriously so that he could focus taking care of the car and I would take care of the other tasks when preparing for a rally. Imatra rally in 2007 with a BMW 325 was our first rally together and that's how my rally "career" began. Since then I have been co-driving for four other drivers, but mostly for my brother. You can find info about driving with my brother from Heikkinen Racing Here in the blog I will also cover other topics than just driving with my brother.