This career milestone for the three young Japanese drivers came almost exactly a year since they were first selected to join the program. It also happened to coincide with the event in which their compatriot Takamoto Katsuta – a product of the first generation of the Challenge Program – stepped up to the main TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team manufacturer line-up for the first time. While Otake, Kogure and Yamamoto dream of one day following in Katsuta’s footsteps, the aims for their Rally Sweden were very different.

In their usual Renault Clio Rally4 cars, the trio were driving at the back of the 51-car field with only one other two-wheel drive car competing in their class. The main objective was for them to adapt to the challenges of their first WRC event, which provided a considerable step up from the national-level rallies they had been used to, taking place over four days with 301.18 competitive kilometres across 18 stages. It was also only their second rally on snow and ice, following last month’s Arctic Rally in Finland, and they had to drive many of the stages in darkness.

With the trio comparing their stage times mainly with each other, there was little to separate Otake and Yamamoto in particular early on. At the end of Friday they would have been separated by just 1.3 seconds for the class lead but for a 10-second time penalty issued to Yamamoto for a late check-in.

By Saturday afternoon, Yamamoto had narrowly moved ahead, only to be stopped in SS13 by an electrical issue that caused he and co-driver Miikka Teiskonen to miss the last two stages of the day before they returned to action under restart rules on Sunday.

This would allow Otake and his co-driver Marko Salminen to claim a comfortable class victory after making it through the full rally distance without major issues or mistakes. That result follows on from a second place in class at the Arctic Rally.

Hikaru Kogure showed strong progress in his stage times following a challenging start to the event on Friday, which included having to stop and change a tyre in SS5. Co-driven by Topi Luhtinen, he made a good step forward in confidence and pace over the rest of the weekend, even though they lost 15 minutes after getting stuck in a snowbank on the penultimate stage.

Quotes:
Hikaru Kogure:“After the Arctic Rally, I did a lot of recce training and lots of physical training as well as watching some onboards and analysing my driving. Here at Rally Sweden I could see some improvement, both in the times and in my performance. On the Friday we lost some time compared to the others but on Saturday I could get a good feeling step-by-step and the time difference was closer, which was nice. It was a really good experience to get lots of kilometres and in many different conditions and it was a really enjoyable event.”

Nao Otake:“This weekend was so exciting for me. There were so many things which were new for me and I learned a lot. The road conditions were quite rough, and sometimes it was quite narrow but fast at the same time and this was a new experience. It was good to be fighting with Yuki; I was pushing for the win and we could have a good rhythm and a good feeling. But after Yuki retired, I just needed to get to the finish and this made the driving quite difficult because I didn’t want to make any mistakes.”

Yuki Yamamoto:“This first WRC event was a fantastic experience for me. OK, it was a bit disappointing again to have to stop with an issue, but it was really nice to still do so many kilometres, and also to experience some quite rough conditions after so many cars had been through in front of us. When the snow was soft, the second loop was very difficult for us in two-wheel drive cars, but it was good experience to have to stay in the line and still have good pace. We had pretty good pace all weekend and we really improved a lot from the Arctic Rally, where we had found many things to improve.”

Mikko Hirvonen (TOYOTA GAZOO Racing WRC Challenge Program chief instructor):“It was a good weekend for their first WRC event. It was a long rally with difficult conditions as they were basically the last cars on the stages, so they faced lots of deep ruts with loose snow on the side. Although there was not so much competition in their class, they were all performing well. Of course, there is still lots to improve but we were positively surprised how well they managed the event and kept their concentration. Nao and Yuki had a very good fight and they were really consistent against each other. Nao was able to go all the way to the end with no mistakes. He maybe felt a bit of pressure to finish, as he was quite far ahead and wanted to secure the result as well, which was really well deserved. We feel very sorry for Yuki that a problem hit his car again; it was really unfortunate and denied him a good result. Hikaru made the biggest step forward over the weekend. He was struggling a bit previously with his speed on snow but he has been working hard. After Friday we tried to push him to be a bit braver and find some more flow in his driving, and he really showed that on Saturday with a very positive improvement in his pace.”