The event was the second asphalt rally for Hikaru Kogure, Nao Otake and Yuki Yamamoto since they were selected to take part in the program, and followed a promising outing at Rallye San Martino in Italy in September. A round of the highly competitive French Tarmac Championship, it would also be the longest event the trio had faced so far, with 196.17 competitive kilometres to be tackled across Friday and Saturday. The rally started and finished in the city of Montpellier in the south of France while the stages took place on very demanding and technical roads through the Cévennes mountain range.

The three young Japanese drivers made a positive start on Friday in their Renault Clio Rally4 cars among a strong 26-car field in their class, with Kogure and Yamamoto each clocking a top-10 stage time across the first two tests. Kogure, co-driven by Topi Luhtinen, was best-placed overall in 10th position until he crashed out in the 20km-long SS3, while Yamamoto and his co-driver Miika Teiskonen would also exit the rally on Friday after an accident in SS4.

Otake had been very close to the pace of his team-mates in the fast opening stages before also finding the more technical stages that followed to be highly challenging. Along with co-driver Marko Salminen he did set a top-eight time in SS6 (the fastest stage of the rally) while a good run through the event’s longest stage of 38.63 km on Sunday afternoon helped him to recover several places as he reached the finish in 14th position.

Quotes:
Hikaru Kogure:“We had quite a nice start in the first two stages which were wide and pretty high-speed. Then from SS3 the character of the stages changed quite a lot and it was very bumpy and slippery, and also quite narrow, so one mistake was enough to cause a big crash – and that’s what happened to us. In that place it was hard to find all the bumps during the recce, and even afterwards checking with my co-driver it was hard to see the one that led me to crash. But it was my mistake and I need to look more carefully during the recce and improve my pacenotes in future. Unfortunately we couldn’t finish this last rally but I have been able to learn and improve a lot thanks to this program this season, with my driving, my pacenotes and many other things. I will continue to do my best and hopefully I can get better results in the future.”

Nao Otake:“This was a very tough rally. There were so many things that I experienced for the first time. There was so much gravel and stones on the road and it was not easy, but I gained so much experience and I’m very happy about that. At first I tried to push but I was a bit too careful and the times were not so good. But I knew that the most important thing was to get the experience so I just tried to get to the finish. The 38km stage was the longest I have ever done in my career, but it went quite OK. This season with this program I have been able to get so many new experiences. Of course I need to improve still but with Marko I feel we have a good combination and I will keep pushing for the future.”

Yuki Yamamoto:“The first two stages were on quite big and fast roads and in SS2 especially we had a good rhythm and the time was not so bad. But then SS3 was the most difficult stage I’ve ever had in my career: Very twisty, narrow and bumpy. I was surprised at how all the bumps that we didn’t mark in the recce were still affecting the car and I couldn’t trust what would happen or trust my notes. SS4 was going well until the crash. At that moment, many things happened in the same corner and the pacenotes were not good enough. But I know how I can learn from this experience and come back stronger for the future. Being part of this program this year has been really special for me and an amazing opportunity to get lots of experience, and I appreciate all the people who are supporting us.”

Mikko Hirvonen (TOYOTA GAZOO Racing WRC Challenge Program chief instructor):“This was a tough and challenging rally to end the season. It started well but the opening stages were quite straightforward and not representative of the rest of the rally, which had very technical and twisting stages in the mountains with a lot of narrow and bumpy sections. It was a big challenge for the drivers and unfortunately Hikaru and Yuki made mistakes and were caught out fairly early. We can be happy that Nao finished the rally and got the experience. He saw first-hand how challenging it was and then he took the approach of gaining the mileage and reaching the finish. The last rally turned out to be the most difficult one but overall this year has been good and the guys have learned a lot. There have been so many new things and they’ve been adapting well. Up until this rally, when there hasn’t been a technical issue they’ve been finishing and making some good results. As we saw this weekend, we are now at a level where it was always going to get more difficult: Rallying is about different conditions and different roads, and there’s still a lot to learn.”