He began with karts and won the Finnish Cup in touring cars before switching to Formula Vee, winning one round of the Scandinavian Championship in his first year.

[5] Due to Finnish legislation, which at that time limited new drivers to a top speed of 80 kilometres per hour (50 mph) on open roads, Toivonen was unable to compete in rallying until he was 19 years old.

[6] While still focusing on his circuit racing career, he competed in his second world rally two years later and finished fifth in the 1977 1000 Lakes in a Chrysler Avenger.

[11] In hopes of better results, the team partnered Toivonen with three different co-drivers during the season: Antero Lindqvist, Paul White and Neil Wilson.

[13] In late November, Toivonen, this time partnered by White, surprised both experts and spectators by winning the Lombard RAC Rally, over four minutes ahead of runner-up Hannu Mikkola.

[11]At 24 years and 86 days, he remained the youngest driver to win a WRC event until his countryman Jari-Matti Latvala won the 2008 Swedish Rally at the age of 22.

In the 1981 season, he was signed up for a larger WRC programme and had a new co-driver, Fred Gallagher, who would later partner Juha Kankkunen and Björn Waldegård in a Toyota Celica Twincam Turbo.

In his Ascona 400 debut in Portugal, Toivonen surprised the event favourites by leading the rally before retiring five stages from the finish.

He also made a guest appearance in one round of the British Formula Three circuit racing championship, where he finished tenth driving a Ralt RT3.

[4] In his Formula One test for March Grand Prix at the Silverstone Circuit, Toivonen was 1.4 seconds faster than the team's regular driver Raul Boesel.

Although the Manta was a Group B car, it was underpowered against the likes of the Audi Quattro A2 and Lancia 037, which were controlling the world rally scene at the time.

He also finished first at the Mille Pistes rally in France, but the organisers decided to ban the Group B cars halfway through the event.

The pair retired from the event, but Piironen would become his main co-driver for the next two seasons, and later have a long and successful partnership with four-time world champion Juha Kankkunen.

[26] After a score of ten starts, two podiums, three other top six finishes and five retirements, Toivonen left Opel Team Europe for the 1984 season.

He started with two retirements, a third and a second place, but went on to win five rallies in a row and led the championship from Italian Lancia driver Carlo Capone.

[28] However, Toivonen's title campaign ended in a back injury and a resulting enforced rest that was expected to take up to two months.

However, similarly to his Opel Ascona 400 debut at the same event two years ago, Toivonen immediately took the lead and set several fastest stage times before retiring.

[32] These three remained Toivonen's only WRC events of the season as his back injury forced him to miss the Sanremo and RAC rallies.

[4] The 1985 season started badly when Toivonen crashed his Lancia 037 into a brick wall at the Rally Costa Smeralda, in the European Championship, seriously injuring his back and breaking three vertebrae in his neck.

[48][49] Red Bull explored the story further by interviewing former Lancia manager Ninni Russo, whose connections stated that Toivonen had made a time on the full circuit that "was in the first ten of the F1 cars from their test at Estoril two or three weeks before.

[10] The 1986 Tour de Corse, a world rally on narrow and very twisty mountain roads around the island of Corsica, began on Thursday, 1 May.

[51]During the second leg, on Friday, 2 May, at the seventh kilometre of the 18th stage, Corte–Taverna, Toivonen's Lancia went off the side of the road at a tight left corner with no guardrail.

[4] The fuel tank was not protected by a skid plate, an item used mainly on gravel rallies, which was not fitted for the all-asphalt Tour de Corse.

The fire caused by the explosion was so intense that the Delta S4, built of fast-burning kevlar-reinforced plastic composite, was unidentifiable as a car afterwards.

In a later interview with Motorsport News, fellow driver Malcolm Wilson claimed that since the neck injuries sustained in his 1985 Costa Smeralda crash, Toivonen had suffered from random blackouts but did not tell his team because he did not want to lose his place at Lancia.

[4] Within hours of Toivonen's crash, Jean-Marie Balestre and the FISA decided to ban Group B cars from competing in the 1987 season.

They were only unsafe in so much as the fuel system, which caused Toivonen's death, and the crowd control needed changing – it wasn't the actual cars.

Toivonen was known as a competitive driver both on loose (gravel, dirt, sand, snow and ice) and tarmac surfaces, and he found it difficult to choose between circuit racing and rallying.

[60] With only wins and retirements in the last five of his rallies, he was at the peak of his career in the Lancia Delta S4, after finally finding a car that was both competitive and suitable for his driving style.

[70] The interviewing event was attended by his former teammate Markku Alén, former co-driver Juha Piironen, current Ford factory team boss Malcolm Wilson and his brother Harri Toivonen.