TOYOTA GAZOO Racing Challenge Program Podium finish for Katsuta in Italy, but bad luck for his team mates
TOYOTA GAZOO Racing Rally Challenge driver Takamoto Katsuta scored his best-ever World Rally Championship result on Rally Italia Sardegna, finishing third in the hotly-contested WRC2 category. His team mate Hiroki Arai set some promising times, but was unable to get to the end.
Unfortunately, it also wasn’t a successful outing for Jarkko Nikara and his Japanese co-driver Sayaka Adachi at the O.K. Auto-Ralli: the latest round of the Finnish Rally Championship on Saturday. They retired following an accident after only five kilometres of the opening stage.
Katsuta/Salminen
Rally Italia Sardegna, round seven of the World Rally Championship, consisted of slow and twisty gravel roads with a hard surface, which became particularly rocky during the second run. Adding to the challenge were extremely high temperatures in excess of 30 degrees centigrade.
Katsuta, co-driven by Marko Salminen, drove a fast and mistake-free rally throughout all four days to end up on the WRC2 podium. They only experienced two problems, both on Saturday. On SS11, the engine died around four kilometres from the end, but the problem solved itself just as suddenly as it started. Then on SS15, the day’s last stage, the duo got a front-left puncture: luckily only around two kilometres from the end of the stage, so they could drive to the finish.
Arai and his co-driver Glenn Macneall hit trouble as soon as the rally began, stopping with an electrical problem on their way back from Thursday night’s super special stage. They completed all of Friday’s stages and grew in speed and confidence with every kilometre, but went off on Saturday’s third stage, becoming wedged on a rock. They came back on Sunday but hit a rock on the second stage that broke a left-hand driveshaft and suspension arm.
The O.K. Auto-Ralli, round five of the Finnish championship based in Kouvola, southern Finland, is a fast gravel event, with some jumps and changes in elevation. It consisted of nine stages, but Nikara and Adachi only completed five kilometres of SS1 before being caught out on a slippery bridge during a fast section. Their Subaru Impreza R4 was too badly damaged by the resulting accident to continue.
Hiroki Arai
“This was a rally to forget for me: it started off badly and then we had a problem every day. Looking at the positive side, on the stages where we managed to have a clean run, we were able to keep pace with some of the top ‘factory’ drivers in WRC2, like Jan Kopecky and Eric Camilli. But of course we were expecting much more, so now we have to work on coming back stronger.”
Sayaka Adachi
“I really wish we had been able to run more: I was trying some short Finnish words in the pace notes as well to speed up the notes, as Finnish championship rallies are so fast and English pace notes aren’t familiar for us. So it would have been really good to practise this more, as it’s a long time to the next rally.”
Jarkko Nikara
“It obviously wasn’t the rally we wanted, but this is part of the sport sometimes. About five kilometres into SS1, there was a wooden bridge with some asphalt on it and this was much more slippery than the rest of the road. I lost the back end of the car, and then on the following corner we hit the bank at about 100kph. We’ll analyse what happened next weekend, but it’s the fault of both of us really: the note was slightly late and I should have been a bit more careful as well.”
Jouni Ampuja (TOYOTA GAZOO Racing Rally Challenge Program instructor)
“It was definitely a very mixed weekend for us. Taka drove what was probably the best rally of his career, keeping a really intelligent pace to get this fantastic result that both he and Marko thoroughly deserve. As for Hiroki, sometimes you just have weekends that go bad for no real reason, and this was one of those. His consolation can be that the stage times were good when he was going. The O.K. Rally in Finland was a very short one for us: when we get back to base we will analyse all the reasons together with Jarkko and Sayaka to see what we can learn.”
Takamoto Katsuta
Arai/Macneall
WRC2 Results:
1 Jan Kopecky/Pavel Dresler (Skoda Fabia R5) 3h36m36.5s
2 Ole Cristian Veiby/Stig Skjarmoen (Skoda Fabia R5) +2m16.4s
3 Takamoto Katsuta/Marko Salminen (Ford Fiesta R5) +7m01.9s
4 Yohan Rossel/Benoit Fulcrand (Citroen DS3 R5) +10m44.9s
5 Pierre-Louis Loubet/Vincent Landais (Ford Fiesta R5) +23m49.7s
Ret Hiroki Arai/Glenn Macneall (Ford Fiesta R5)
FRC Results:
1 Kalle Rovanpera/Risto Pietilainen (Skoda Fabia R5) 39m46.3s
2 Juuso Nordgren/Mikael Korhonen (Skoda Fabia R5) +27.7s
3 Marko Manty/Joni Makela (Skoda Fabia R5) +28.4s
4 Jesse Turunen/Kari Kallio (Hyundai i20 R5) +51.8s
5 Juha Salo/Jarno Ottman (Peugeot 208 T16 R5) +1m00.5s
Ret Jarkko Nikara/Sayaka Adachi (Subaru Impreza R4)
What’s next?:
Arai and Katsuta will be in action next at the Autoglym Rally in Finland from July 14-15. This fast gravel event is used as a warm-up for the WRC Rally Finland, which they will compete on next.
The next round of the Finnish Rally Championship, contested by Nikara and Adachi, is the Oili Jalonen Ralli in Uusikaupunki, southwest Finland from September 8–9.
Quotes:
Takamoto Katsuta
“I am very happy with this result. I’d like to thank my co-driver Marko in particular so much and all the team, as well as my family, to help me develop in this way and supporting me. Sardinia was a fantastic rally and very tough but I felt a bit nervous when the engine stopped on Saturday: I thought it could be all over then, but luckily it wasn’t a big issue. Apart from that we had no real problems and this is very encouraging for the future as we look for more good results.”