Mikko Hirvonen (TOYOTA GAZOO Racing WRC Challenge Program chief instructor):
“We entered Tomiya into this rally to give him more experience of what it takes to be a co-driver at WRC level. Portugal is always one of the most demanding events for a co-driver, with a long recce covering many stages and a lot of kilometres, as well as a demanding itinerary with remote services and overnight halts. It’s also quite a rough event for the cars, meaning a lot of work on the road sections, and this started already after the first stage when they had a broken brake hose. Unfortunately, their Friday was quite short after Jarkko misjudged a slippery braking point and they hit a tree, and on Saturday afternoon they picked up some damage in the ruts and had to end their day early. Even though they were not able to complete as many stages as we might have hoped, all experience is good experience, especially in such rough conditions, and Jarkko was very happy with Tomiya’s pacenote reading on the stages.”

Tomiya Maekawa
“This was my first experience of the WRC event in Portugal, and it was the toughest rally I have ever done. The challenges started from the long recce which covered quite long distances, and we had to move hotels every night. This continued into the first day of the rally, when the overnight parc fermé was a long distance from the service park. Because of the quite rough stage conditions, we had to make repairs to the car on the road sections quite a few times, and some more serious damage forced us to retire from both Friday and Saturday. Thanks to our mechanics, we could continue in the rally and still get quite a lot of experience. The rally itself was not so clean and smooth for us but it was nice to gain such experience from one of the toughest events in the WRC calendar. Thank you to the team and our supporters who made this opportunity possible.”