Formerly known as the Rally di Alba, this was the third asphalt rally that the young Japanese trio have taken part in since their training with the WRC Challenge Program began last year, and the second in Italy after last September’s Rallye San Martino. This time they were up against even tougher competition, with the event being part of both the Italian Rally Championship and the Tour European Rally (TER).

The route featured a total of 101.02 competitive kilometres across eight stages in the hills of the Piedmont region in northwest Italy – although the final two tests would be cancelled for all of the Rally4 crews because of delays to the schedule.

Following a short opening stage on Friday evening, Yamamoto already climbed up into sixth position among the 21 Rally4 entries in the first of Saturday’s stages. He was able to maintain that position until the finish thanks to a series of consistent times, with he and co-driver Miika Teiskonen never outside of the top-seven fastest times on Saturday.

Kogure made the strongest start of the trio on Friday evening and was running just one position behind Yamamoto after the two stages that made up the Saturday morning loop. His progress was interrupted in SS4 by a puncture before he and co-driver Topi Luhtinen were unfortunately forced to stop and retire later in the stage due to a broken driveshaft.

Otake was right with his two team-mates inside the top eight in the category after Saturday’s first stage, but lost around four minutes in SS3 as a consequence of tyre damage. He recovered to set more top-10 stage times in the afternoon as he finished 15th in class with co-driver Marko Salminen.

Quotes:
Hikaru Kogure:“I was really looking forward to doing an asphalt rally again after a lot of driving on snow, so I had quite a nice feeling coming to Italy. In the pre-event test I had a really good feeling, also in shakedown and the first few stages of the rally, the pacenotes and everything was working well. Unfortunately in SS4 I got a puncture in the middle of the stage and then after a few hundred metres, the technical issue happened and we had to retire. I enjoyed the stages; they were not so high-speed with technical sections and I found them to be quite similar to Japan, so I could drive with some confidence. I just struggled a bit with cutting in places which had sharp edges to the side of the road and then it’s difficult to estimate if I can cut or if I have to avoid it: that was really good learning on this event.”

Nao Otake:“It was nice to be back on asphalt this weekend. The main thing for me was to get to the finish, so I’m happy with that. On Saturday morning we had a slow puncture in the road section before the first stage, so we needed to change that tyre. Then in the stage I had another puncture, and afterwards I had to change back to the tyre that had the slow puncture. It didn’t last in the next stage so we lost a lot of time because of that. After that, for me the driving was quite OK. It was a bit difficult to find the balance for the risk and for the times, so I was a bit careful in some sections on some stages but I think I had some good sections too. I learned a lot about how to feel the road conditions; for sure some places were tricky with the cuts and there was some big gravel so I needed to take care. It was good experience for me.”

Yuki Yamamoto:“This was a very positive rally for me. It was another new experience but the pace was quite OK so that was really nice. In this rally there were a lot of places where you need to take cuts in the corners, which we didn’t see so much in the rallies we did last year. Even if I didn’t have a cut in the pacenotes, if I could see that the line was going from cut to cut then I still had to follow it. That was the biggest challenge this weekend. Already in the beginning the pace seemed to be quite OK so we decided to try and keep that pace and that natural driving to get a really good feeling and it went well, so I’m really happy.”

Mikko Hirvonen (TOYOTA GAZOO Racing WRC Challenge Program chief instructor):“We were excited to see how our drivers would do on asphalt after all the pacenote training they’ve been doing over the winter. In terms of our preparation, everything worked really well: the guys were really switched on in the test and driving already with a clever approach, getting the feeling back on asphalt after quite a long break. In the rally, Yuki continued where he left off in the winter and did another really good rally. Competing against the Italians is really tough as they know the roads and they are really quick here, but Yuki was still able to have good speed. It was a pity what happened to Hikaru. With his circuit background we knew he was really keen to get back on asphalt and we straightaway saw he was feeling more confident. We felt bad that he had to retire; there was nothing he could have done differently. Still, he was able to show his speed and hopefully he can take confidence from this rally. Nao was a bit unlucky as well but he was able to get back into the rally and do all the stages that were run, which is good experience for him. With a few delays and cancelled stages we didn’t get all the kilometres we wanted, but in terms of the driving from all three guys, it was a very positive weekend.”