Biography
Name: Pekka-Santeri Saarinen
Born: 27th july 1983 in Heinola, Finland
Lives: Shanghai (China)/ Lahti (Finland)
Height: 1.72 meters
Weight: 65 kilos
Hobbies: Snowboarding, fitness, cars, a bit of golf
Favourite food: Italian pasta
Education: Commercial studies
Languages: Finnish, English, Swedish, a bit Italian, studying German and Chinese
Pekka´s motor racing career started at the age of five. When Pekka started racing he was not only one in Saarinen family who was in motorsport. Pekka's three big brothers also drove karting in these day's. Of course Pekka had many activities when he was young, like football, skiing, ice hockey and so on but still motorsport was most important.
When years went by brothers quitted motorsport and decided to do something more "clever" and study.
During Pekka's international career, started 1996, he has been always one of the best Finnish drivers and usually he used to beat his teammates. From the over all success and age point of view Pekka is the new talent to follow Kimi Räikkönen and Heikki Kovalainen.
Motor racing is very demanding from the technical point of view and you cannot get the best equipments for every season, which means some times poor results. This fact is putting the driver to a hard mental pressure in order to keep up the motivation and make his best in spite of this.
When Pekka changed from karting to formula cars the step was big and Pekka's first year went only learning tricks from Formula Renault 2.0. But still Pekka had few good results in first year, like 5th place in Hockenheim. In 2004 Pekka already showed that skills are there, win and many podium positions.
And finally in 2005 Pekka won German Formula Renault 2.0 championship.
Highlights:
2003: 5th place in second race
2004: First win and several podium positions
2005: German Champion in Formula Renault 2.0, 10 podiums in 16 races
2006: International Formula Challenge Champion
2006: Asian Formula Renault Champion
