TOYOTA GAZOO Racing Rally Challenge Programme
This past weekend Toyota Gazoo Racing Rally Challenge Program drivers Takamoto Katsuta and Hiroki Arai, faced by far their biggest challenge yet in their training period with Tommi Mäkinen Racing, competing in the Neste Rally Finland. This was their first start in an FIA World Rally Championship event and Rally Finland is known as one of the toughest events in the sport.
Despite the size of this challenge, Katsuta was able to successfully reach the finish, which was the main target for both drivers in their Ford Fiesta R5s. Arai meanwhile completed 21 of the 24 stages before broken suspension resulting from an off put an early end to his rally.
With the two young Japanese drivers having mostly competed so far on small one-day rallies in Finland and having experienced a tough preparation event at Rally Estonia in the FIA European Rally Championship, the priority was not on results for Rally Finland but rather on gaining experience.
Katsuta, co-driven by Daniel Barritt, was pleased in this regard, finishing 12th in the WRC2 category. “I'm so happy because I think this rally is the most difficult in the world,” he said. “I'm very happy to finish this rally and to finish every stage. I had a puncture on day two, so we lost quite a lot of time, but we finished this rally so I learned a lot of things.”
Arai tried to increase his performance each day, and was able to set a top-six stage time in the WRC2 category on Saturday, but his and co-driver Glenn Macneall's rally ended on Sunday morning with only 3 stages left in the rally. “I just carried too much speed after I misheard a pacenotes,” Arai explained. “I hit a stump on the outside of the corner, and that was it. But I feel quite happy, I learned many things. It was quite tough but it's OK.”
The pair's chief instructor Jouni Ampuja commented: “Of course we knew before the rally that this would be really challenging: like a first real rally. Lots of things happened and only Taka got through all the stages. The only aim was to get to the finish. It was hard and we weren't expecting any results but to get that experience and to also get an understanding of the level in this sport and where we are right now. “They were not high up in the standings but both guys are doing things much better than one year ago, so the things we have been training them on during this last year has brought good progress. Naturally, there is still a lot of work to do to compete on an international level.”
