The Gronholm advice that helped Hirvonen take on Loeb

Sharing a service park tent with a double world champion can be a daunting prospect for any young driver climbing the World Rally Championship ranks. But four-time WRC runner-up Mikko Hirvonen believes the no nonsense advice gleaned from his team-mate at Ford between 2006 and 2007, Marcus Gronholm, proved to be among the biggest influences on his rally career.

At opposite ends of their respective careers, rising star Hirvonen joined 2000 and 2002 champion Gronholm to create an all-new and all-Finnish line-up at the factory Ford squad, which had run Toni Gardemeister and Roman Kresta in 2005.

At the relatively tender age of 26, Hirvonen was elevated to the coveted seat following a 2005 season largely on the sidelines, although he’d scored a first podium in a privately entered two-year-old Ford in Catalunya, after cutting his teeth as Petter Solberg’s team-mate at the factory Subaru team in 2004.

It was a campaign that arrived in somewhat unusual circumstances, Hirvonen installed to replace the already-signed Richard Burns when the 2001 world champion contracted the brain tumour that he would sadly succumb to a year later. Hirvonen’s best finishes had been a pair of fourths in Argentina and Australia.

After finishing as the best works Ford, fifth, in a one-off appearance in Finland, and a solitary outing for Skoda in Japan that ended in retirement, Hirvonen joined Gronholm for 2006 as the junior partner in the team. But he grew in confidence alongside the former Peugeot ace to end their two-year spell with four wins and a further 14 podium finishes. In the final 10 rallies of 2006, Hirvonen was only off the podium twice and scored his breakthrough maiden triumph in Australia to cement third in the standings – a feat he repeated in 2007, with wins in Norway, Japan and Wales.

It was a period that marked Hirvonen out as a genuine WRC title contender, and the driver to pick up the Finnish rally baton from Gronholm. In 2009, he came as close as anybody to ending Sebastien Loeb’s run of dominance, finishing just one point in arrears of the Citroen tour de force.

Reflecting on his 163-rally WRC career, headlined by 15 wins, Hirvonen picks Gronholm as his favourite team-mate from among a talented bunch that includes Solberg, Jari-Matti Latvala, Robert Kubica and nine-time champion Loeb when he spent the 2012 and 2013 campaigns at Citroen.

“I was still young when I joined with [Gronholm],” Hirvonen tells Motorsport.com. “He was a bit like Kalle…