Matsushita and Goto faced the fastest rally of their careers to date in Kitee, taking on gravel roads that featured similarities to Finland’s world championship round further west in Jyväskylä: fast and flowing with lots of jumps and crests, and high-speed corners which need to be transitioned between smoothly to maximise pace.

A technical problem on the first stage cost Matsushita and co-driver Pekka Kelander a chance of a strong overall finish. But impressively Matsushita fixed his car at the roadside, managing to continue with a time penalty due to the delays caused by his repair efforts. His pace thereafter was incredibly impressive, regularly matching the pace of Finland’s best junior drivers throughout the rally.

For Goto it was a short-lived end to the season: a small error in a high-speed corner on the rally’s opening stage sent him into a spin and off the road, leading to his and co-driver Jussi Lindberg’s retirement.

Quotes:
Shotaro Goto:
“It’s a shame that I retired on the first stage, which meant I had no chance to gain more experience after that. There was a fast left-hander where I was doing around 150km/h and couldn’t quite make it – but this is a fast rally that requires big commitment, so it’s important to push otherwise you risk being left behind. But looking at the positives, earlier in the season I did not feel I was pushing enough to find the limit at times. This was my only retirement of the year and making such mistakes is an important part of growing as a driver. Across this first year of my rally career, I’ve learned a lot. Future SM-Ralli in Lahti was a highlight: my pace was much better than I’d expected pre-event, which gave me lots of confidence in driving to my pacenotes and gave me a good feeling about the direction I was going in.”

Takumi Matsushita:
“It was the best rally of my life so far! I had a great feeling behind the wheel; our big step forward on this event was from the quality of the pacenotes I’d made, which really helped with my rhythm. I was able to build up a more precise image of the road than ever before and attack the road, as I can trust the pacenotes I’d made with Pekka. It’s been a great season and I feel I have made a huge step. At the first rally in Pohjanmaa I had to focus on making it through the corners to reach the finish – but now I have a lot of leftover mental capacity to consider how to maximise my pace. I went from believing in myself that I could compete with the best drivers in Finland at the start of this program to matching their pace by the end of the season.”

Mikko Hirvonen (TOYOTA GAZOO Racing WRC Challenge Program chief instructor):
“It was a really strong performance from Takumi, his best of the season. He was unlucky to run into technical issues on the opening stage but his comeback was incredibly impressive. He demonstrated how much he’s learned this year with how consistently fast he was. He was really close to the fastest drivers in Finland in his category, which is especially impressive given how high speed yet technical the roads were. While Shotaro did not have the chance to demonstrate his speed, his accident is part of the learning curve of rallying for any young driver. That this was the first rally-ending accident of the season for either driver is a testament to how impressive they’ve been all year. Across the season their progress has been clear, with mistakes being few and far between. Considering they started this year with zero experience of driving to pacenotes and faced a completely new environment, we are very impressed with what they have achieved in 2024.”