Training period 4 (incl. Pirelli Rally) 19 Sep. - 26 Sep. 2015

2015.10.16

（Instructor：Jouni Ampuja, Jarmo Lehtinen, Mikko Hirvonen）

[Training objectives]

The main objective of the fourth training was to improve their pacenote and navigation skills. After Leppavirta Rally Sprint and the following 4-day training, Takamoto Katsuta and Hiroki Arai participate in Pirelli Rally Tampere, the final round of the Finnish Rally Championship.

Training and Rally summary

Day1 19 Sep.
Leppavirta Rally Sprint
Both Katsuta and Arai faced a new experience, a one stage rally without pacenotes. In rally sprint races, drivers can only familiarize the road by using bicycles. After the recce, they drive twice by competition speed. On this three kilometers stage, both drivers found a good rhythm already in the first runs and shorten their time a lot in the second run. Katsuta improved his time by four seconds and got the class second. Joni Nikko won the class by the margin of 2.5 seconds. Arai was third in class with 0.7 seconds behind Katsuta. Overall they performed very well.
Day2 20 Sep.
Driving training ＠Jouhtikyla
Driving training on the wide, flowing road, which has been used many times in Rally Finland. Also tried small changes to the car set-up with guidance from Mikko Hirvonen.
Day3 21 Sep.
Pacenote training
Concentrated on pacenote exercises using three stages well known in Rally Finland. By repeating the same thing and gaining experiences, their pacenote work is getting smoother step by step.
Day4 22 Sep.
Driving training ＠Yijalantie
Driving training on the high speed, wide road with jumps which is very similar to the roads in Pirelli Rally Tampere.
Day5 23 Sep.
Pacenote training
Pacenote training at very challanging stages, Vaheri and Ouninpohja, both well-known in WRC. As Ouninpohja is especially a high-level stage, both crews faced a lot of challenges and difficulties.
Day6-8 24-26 Sep.
Pirelli Rally Tampere
Parcitipated in Pirelli Rally Tampere, the final round of the Finnish Rally Championship. This gravel rally with seven special stages was held in Tampere, the second biggest city in Finland.

■Major events at Pirelli Rally

  1. 24 Sep. Preparation
    - Rally briefing
    - Tyre change training
    - Administrative check and recce registration
  2. 25 Sep. Pirelli Rally Day1
    - Recce for 7 different stages
    - Special stages 1-2 (2.02km/16.01km)
  3. 26 Sep. Pirelli Rally Day2
    - Arai/Hall retired at SS3
    - Katsuta/Adachi retired after SS4

Arai/Hall: On Day1 the crew had slight problems with timing of pacenotes in SS2, but finished the day without big problems overall. The first stage on Day2 started well with good speed control, and their split times showed that they were in top three pace. After around 20kms of the stage, there was a delayed pacenote information and the car was forced to turn too early into the corner with too much speed, then it hit a rock and rolled heavily to the other side of the road. After the crash the car got major damages and Arai had some pain in his left arm, but it wasn't a serious injury and both crew were ok.

Katsuta/Adachi: Because of an accident happened during the driving training, their car was changed to a Group N car. Although Katsuta was not yet familiar with the car, he showed a clean run on the first stage of Day1. Day2 started with SS3 and SS4 was going normally without bigger mistakes. But an accdient happedned two kilometers before the finish. Katsuta drove too fast into a left hand corner and got a wide line into the ditch and rolled the car. The car wasn't damaged too badly and they were able to finish the stage, but with broken radiator they had to retier after SS4.

Drivers' diary

Hiroki Arai
HIROKI ARAI

written by Hiroki Arai
On the stage 3 I had a big crash which I never experienced before. Luckily both co-driver and I were fine without injury, and I’m feeling it is the most important thing. One of the reasons of the mistake was that my pacenote was not good enough. The other reason is that there was a delay in pacenote reading at the fastest corner followed by a slow corner and therefore breaking was too late to the next corner. I’m sorry that the car was heavily damaged, but Phil and I could find out the causes and how we could improve in the future. I will try hard to improve those points.

【Comments from instructors】 It was unlucky that they experienced a big crash this time, but we feel the combination between Hiroki and Phil became even stronger because of the accident. He will improve more by concentrating on distances and corner lengths on the pacenote.

Takamoto_Katsuta
TAKAMOTO
KATSUTA

written by Takamoto_Katsuta
Around 14kms of SS4 I entered into the left tight corner with a bit too much speed, and because of that the line got a bit off. I thought I could recover it but the rear got stuck and the car ended up rolling. It was totally my mistake and I’m very sorry, but I reviewed my driving thoroughly so that it won’t happen again. The result was not pleasant this time, but good thing is my feeling to these difficult high speed stages in Finland are getting better and better. I just need to make sure not to have this kind of mistakes. I will keep working hard!

【Comments from instructors】　So far he is showing an impressive progress in driving. His current challanges are to put attention to consistency of his notes and speed control. From next training we would also like to see Taka and Sayaka driving with English pacenotes in rally speed.

Summary and Preview of the Next Training

lecuture

During the rally in Tampere Arai/Hall had a big crash and Katsuta/Adachi also had to retire, but they all had good experience and progress. After the accidents, all crews were very dissapointed, but we all understood that these kind of things happen in rally. We were happy to know that all of them went back to the stages by themselves on the next day to learn from what happened. The important thing is to learn from the mistakes and come back even stronger.

[Next Training] Next period will be the last training in Finland this year. Based on the judgement that the drivers should concentrate on gravel rally at this point, they will participate in Rally Latvija instead of Poland National Rally, which was originally planned. During the training session, they will keep focusing on pacenote practice and speed control on not so familiar roads.

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