Juha Matti Pellervo Kankkunen is a Finnish former rally driver. His factory team career in the World Rally Championship lasted from 1983 to 2002. He won 23 world rallies and four drivers' world championship titles, which were both once records in the series. Sébastien Loeb has since collected more world titles, but no driver has so far been able to repeat Kankkunen's feat of becoming a world champion with three different manufacturers. Kankkunen's achievements outside the WRC include winning the Dakar Rally in 1988 and the Race of Champions in 1988 and 1991. Following his retirement from active rallying, he has worked in the fields of business and politics. From 2007 to 2011, Kankkunen held the world speed record on ice in a Bentley Continental GT.
On 15 February 2011, Juha Kankkunen drove his 6.0 litre all-wheel drive Bentley Continental car on the frozen Baltic Sea off the coast of Finland. He achieved a speed of 205.48 miles per hour and created a new world record. A 16.5 km long track with about 70 cm thick sea ice was prepared for this purpose. The officials of Finland traffic police were present to measure the speeds. A representative of The Guinness Book of World Records ratified the same. The Champion had to overcome the low temperatures of minus 30, apart from sudden snow blizzards and severe crosswinds, but braved it to all to achieve the marvellous success. Bentley’s new chairman paid the tribute to Juha and chief executive Wolfgang when he said that the new record made by him under such extreme conditions is in fact an amazing achievement and speaks of the skill and courage of Juha, who can be rightly called as a modern-day ‘Bentley Boy’. He wowed to celebrate this historic event by building another state-of-the-art Bentley model very soon, which will be the most powerful model. My dear friend Merja gave me this nice maxi card.
