Press Releases - JJ Lehto World TCS Champion Of The World

JJ Lehto World TCS Champion Of The World

Season 46 will forever be remembered in the career of JJ Lehto. Because that season is the first one when Lehto became World Driver´s Champion in Touring Car´s main series. More impressive is that he was able to win it in his debut season without any previous setups from Touring car´s.

Lehto and Sobolev found themselves constantly in the podium together and one day Lehto was ahead and one day it was Sobolev. But Lehto´s amazing 29/30 Top 5 results, 30/30 Top 10 results, 26/30 Podium results helped Lehto to secure the title by 11 points in the end.

For season 46 Lehto took different approach to the season, learning from his mistakes in season´s 44 & 45 when he was locked in heated Championship battles in V8 with Mikael Salo & Pertti Räikkönen, where in both seasons Lehto lost the lead in the championship and the title in the last race with DNF. New approach was to not think what other´s around you are doing, but focusing on your own performance.

This approach helped Lehto not to be bothered if he didn´t win every single race or if he wasn´t in the podium in every single race, but to maximise the result every single time. It´s a Marathon not a Sprint.

Wise man once said: Smart man learns more from his enemies then a fool from his friends. So thank you to Salo & Skinny for giving Lehto the experience to deal with Hectic Championship rivalry pressures, without those failures i don´t think Lehto would have matured enough to become consistent driver.

Thank you to Sobolev for amazing season.