Following Rally Japan’s return to the calendar in 2022, this was the second time that the WRC visited the Aichi and Gifu prefectures, close to the city of Nagoya where Katsuta was born. The technical and twisting asphalt roads in the surrounding mountains were made even more demanding by heavy rain at the beginning of Friday, the longest day of the rally.

Katsuta immediately felt at one with his GR YARIS Rally1 HYBRID, and was setting the pace through the Isegami’s Tunnel stage that opened Friday before he lost control on a patch of standing water and hit a tree, picking up damage to the front of his car. He and co-driver Aaron Johnston carried out running repairs on the road section to bring the car back to mid-day service, although five-and-a-half minutes were lost, leaving them 24th overall.

With the TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team mechanics managing to fix the car, Katsuta returned to the stages in the afternoon and was immediately back up to speed, winning all three mountain tests.

Now up to ninth overall, Katsuta continued his superb pace on Saturday, achieving the best time in all five of the day’s mountain stages. This brought him up to sixth overall, with his sights set on closing the 40.9-second gap to fourth position. He gained fifth with an attacking stage win in a treacherous third stage of Sunday, and after taking a ninth stage win in the penultimate test, he ended up only 20s shy of fourth place.

Quotes:
Takamoto Katsuta:“This was such a long weekend and the conditions were not easy. In terms of the speed, we could have very good pace in almost all of the stages, so I need to take this kind of speed and confidence into the future. Of course, I feel disappointed about what happened at the beginning of the rally but after that I was able to bounce back very quickly. I felt so good and comfortable with the car during the whole weekend, and a huge thanks to the team for fixing it because I was able to really push afterwards. I tried to push until the very end of the rally. It was not easy to catch those in front but we could get fifth overall in the end. Next time, I want to bring a good result. I’m very happy for the team finishing the rally 1-2-3, so congratulations to all of them. I also want to say a huge thanks to all of the fans who were supporting me everywhere and giving me extra energy.”

Jari-Matti Latvala (Team Principal, TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team):“It was great to see Taka fighting back to fifth position after his unfortunate incident on Friday. He never gave up and kept fighting until the last day. He couldn’t quite reach the fourth place in the end, but it was still good to see him bounce back like he did with nine fastest times across the weekend. Speed-wise I think it was the best performance we have seen from him and demonstrates the potential that he has. He showed that he can win multiple stages in a row and be consistently quick, which is really promising. Overall he has done really good steps this year. The beginning of the season was tough for him but in the second half of the year his confidence has been growing and that’s encouraging for us.”