Jussi Vehvilainen
Published: 26th November 2007
Author: Words and photos by Alex Hodgkinson
He walked away from top-flight MX at the end of '05 but Jussi Vehvilainen’s still winning hearts – and breaking bones – in the MX3 word championship…
Jussi Vehvilainen is one of the most popular foreigners ever to have ridden full-time in Britain - not only for his friendly demeanour but also because the fiery Finn is one of the gutsiest triers in the game.
His all-action style and never-ending desire saw Jussi break his back three times before he quit CAS Honda and the GP big-time at the end of 2005 but at the age of 29 he was back on the world championship trail in 2007 to clinch a FIM bronze medal in MX3 on the final lap of GP racing this summer.
“Yes, I’m still a GP rider, even if it’s in the veteran class! No, only joking - but it is different, good fun and that’s what counts. And I even broke my neck again!” he adds in that jovial barking tone which betrays so many Finns. “I hadn’t even thought about MX1 or MX2 since I left CAS at the end of ’05. I took a fresh look at my future and they were no longer part of it. I saw I had gone past my peak and I couldn’t see any reason to keep riding there just to make up the numbers.
“But MX3 is still world class racing, just a slightly lower standard. It is a world championship, the racing is pretty good and the top guys are still pretty fast. Yves Demaria doesn’t need any introduction and Sven Breugelmans has surprised me this year. He isn’t just fast in sand, he has also been fast on hard tracks so I’m not losing to bad riders.
“My goal was to be top three all year. It didn’t really happen though I guess that was because I kept hurting myself. I missed three GPs but I kept going for that top three finish and I got it on the last lap.”
That final vital point at Faenza in September came with a pass on ’05 champ Breugelmans after Jussi had come out on top of an almost race-long tussle with 1999 world 500cc champion Andrea Bartolini and run down the points lead which Alvaro Lozano and Kris Salaets had on him at the start of the day.
“You need to race hard here also but I don’t think I’ve been riding over the limit. You can’t do that with a 480 anyway. I still approach racing professionally, training hard and doing everything I can but it’s more fun again nowadays. The top guys are fast but the point is that there is not so much depth so it doesn’t matter quite so much if you don’t make a good start.
“If you make a bad start or crash you can still get back to top eight pretty quickly. And, even if you have a bad day, you won’t be out of the top 10. It’s just that little bit easier - those days when you are banging your head against a brick wall in a train in 15th place on a track where passing is difficult, they don’t happen here.”
With little publicity in the biking press, a major obstacle MX3 riders have to overcome is finance because - as in MX1/MX2 - there is no start or prize money.
“The biggest job was to put together the sponsorship but that’s the same in any class and we will continue next year. I was quite lucky in this. My main sponsor is from Holland. They manufacture vegetable machinery and we came together because they supply my dad who has a big onion farm back in Finland.”
And ‘we’ in JPV (Jussi’s middle name is Pekka) Racing includes Paul Teasdale who has rejoined him from the CAS days. “Paul is a one of the real plus sides. It’s very important to have a good mechanic, a guy I can trust, who believes in me but also someone I can get on, a good friend. I knew from our time at CAS that it would work out.
“You spend too long together in this sport to work with someone you don’t get on with so that is very important. Even more so here than in MX1. This is old school. I travel with the truck also to most of the races, pretty much like it was at the start of my career. And it’s fun. We had some nice trips, like the eastern tour. We had a race in Slovakia, then Bulgaria and we went through Hungary and Romania. Those guys in MX1 and MX2 don’t do that anymore, they just fly to the race, straight back home afterwards and they see nothing of the world except the race track.
“This trip too. We’ve been on the road since Denmark, then to Switzerland and straight here to Italy and we’ve been camping out of the truck. And you know, when I was young I never really took much interest in the different countries but it’s nice now to see how different people live. You appreciate these things more as you get a little older.”
It’s undoubtedly true to say that injuries wrecked Jussi’s career. “Yes. I broke my back three times racing MX1. And even this year I also broke my neck a bit. That was in Sweden, and earlier in the year I totally ripped the ligaments off my shoulder and hurt the bicep muscles of my right arm and in Slovakia I broke my ACL.”
But even that list cannot depress Jussi. “I get operated on Thursday. I’m getting them all done at once at a place called Joensuu, almost in Russia. Full service for one day!”