Last weekend the Toyota GAZOO Racing Rally Challenge Program drivers Takamoto Katsuta and Hiroki Arai participated in the 5th round of the Finnish Rally Championship, SM Ralli Turku, driven in Western Finland. The rally consisted of 9 special stages and 84 special stage kilometers, with the total length of the route being 402 kilometers. SM Ralli Turku was a gravel rally driven in dry summer conditions.

Hiroki Arai and co-driver Glenn Macneall finished 7th in their class, and Takamoto Katsuta, with his co-driver Daniel Barritt, ended up 10th. Both crews competed with Ford Fiesta R5’s in the SM1 class.

Arai drove the entire rally matching the pace of the leaders. The differences were really small, and Arai even set the fastest time in his class on SS7. On the final stage his driving was hampered with a technical problem, as the anti-roll bar snapped mid-way through SS8 and made the car unstable. The problem couldn’t be fixed for the final stage, SS9, and Arai dropped from 6th place to 7th. He finished 34.3 seconds behind the class winners.

Arai had DNFs from the previous two rallies, so the good result from Turku was a relief. “I was a little worried coming to this event. We just had to get the car to the finish line in one piece, and we did that, so I’m happy”, Arai said after the rally. “Driving in the dark was a challenge, and the top speeds of the R5’s weren’t enough to match for example the Mitsubishi Evo’s – even though we were pushing really hard and nearly redlining it. The speeds got extremely high in places”, Arai summed up the challenges of the rally.