He won the Finnish Rally Championship Group a (under 2000 cc) title in 1997 behind the wheel of a Nissan Sunny and was driving for the Spanish car firm SEAT for limited outings in 1998 with the Ibiza.

Finishing second once more on the Rallye de France in Corsica to the all-conquering Sébastien Loeb was thought to have aided Gardemeister's claim to retaining his drive with Ford for the 2006 season.

He finished the season a career-best fourth in the drivers' world championship, scoring twice as many points as his team-mate Roman Kresta.

In the 2007 season, Gardemeister competed in five world rallies with a Mitsubishi Lancer WRC05 and one with a Citroën Xsara WRC.

Along with an eighth place in Finland and another seventh in New Zealand, Gardemeister also achieved Suzuki's first WRC stage win in Japan and finished sixth overall behind his team-mate PG Andersson.

In 2010 he again participated at the IRC Rallye Monte Carlo with an Astra Racing run Fiat Grande Punto Abarth S2000.

After that, he bought himself a Škoda Fabia S2000 and launched his own team, TGS Worldwide OU; his main sponsors were Mad Croc and Hankook.

He sometimes complained that the works Škodas had a technical advantage over the marque's privateer drivers, because of certain updates they couldn't get.

Gardemeister tried to put together the budget he needed to return to the IRC in 2012, but with Hankook leaving his team, his efforts were unsuccessful.

He started to focus on renting out his Škoda, and entered some rally-raid events with various Mitsubishi cars, and achieved some good results.