Mikko Hirvonen (TOYOTA GAZOO Racing WRC Challenge Program chief instructor):
“This was the first asphalt rally with the Program for Rio, Kanta and Tomiya and it went well. There was a lot for them to learn but we had three good days of testing on asphalt beforehand and we were really impressed with how they well handled the rally. Kanta had done a few rallies on asphalt in the Morizo Challenge Cup in Japan last year, and although we encouraged him to make a steady start, the times were already good from the beginning. He started to build up his speed on Friday afternoon, winning a stage, until he had to retire due to a technical issue, which was really unfortunate. Still, he was able to learn and show a lot. For Rio, it was his first ever rally on asphalt, and like Kanta he was able to build his pace but he could take it to the finish, going fastest on the penultimate stage and second fastest on the last one. In Italy, the level of the local drivers on asphalt is really high and they know the roads, so the pace that both Kanta and Rio showed was really impressive. It was a good experience for Tomiya too: he was quite surprised how quickly the rhythm was changing on those roads. There’s a lot of information in the pacenotes, so you need to be careful with the rhythm of the calling and be precise, but he had Jarkko had a good solid rally and finished without problems.”

Rio Ogata
“In this rally, I was able to experience a variety of stages, from fast and flat stages to tricky, bumpy and mossy stages. My driving needed to be smooth to be well-suited to the asphalt roads, and I was able to build up my pace and confidence throughout the two days. Especially on the second day, I was able to trust my pacenotes and have good confidence and I could do some good stage times at the end of the rally. These two weeks in Italy have given me my first experience driving on asphalt, and I am very glad that I was able to learn so much.”

Kanta Yanaguida
“This rally was good learning and experience for me. On the first day, I had a bit of a steady start in the morning but I was able to drive with confidence in the afternoon and I set good times on stages four and five. On SS6 we had a technical issue on the car and lost a lot of time, and the problem could not be fixed so we could not continue and drive the second day. That was very disappointing because my main focus was to finish this rally and gain the experience. Still, I was able to learn many things from this rally, like how to manage the tyres, and I was able to improve my driving from the morning to the afternoon and have a better feeling, so this is something positive to take away.”

Tomiya Maekawa
“This was the first time that Jarkko and I were competing on an asphalt rally together, and so we were focused quite hard on getting the full experience from the event, especially having had accidents on the last two rallies and lost a little bit of confidence in ourselves because of that. Now I’m quite satisfied that we were able to finish this rally and gain a lot of experience for asphalt rallying. The rhythm on the stages and in the pacenotes is quite different from gravel rallies, and I’m sure this learning will help with my co-driving in the future.”