Rally Portugal: Day 1Three Toyotas take the start for the first time, at Rally Portugal

Quotes:
Tom Fowler (Chief Engineer)

“There are some similarities with Rally Argentina, so we’re using a similar set-up to what we had there, with the addition of certain developments and improvements that we’ve made since then. All three cars are running a broadly similar set-up, including Esapekka obviously. For this event, the priority is to give him as much running as possible, so we’re not doing anything very different with his car. But in the future, we’ll have the possibility of trying out some new things to use on the other cars. This is very big asset to help us get better in our learning year. We did quite a lot of work on the suspension in our pre-event test and we felt that we made a step forward, so hopefully that will be reflected in our times this weekend.”

Jari-Matti Latvala (Driver car 10)

“I enjoyed the stage and there was a great atmosphere; we just had a little bit of understeer, which we will think about tonight. In the end, the super special is very different from the rest of the rally though, so there is no point in taking too many conclusions from this stage on its own. I’m very happy with what we achieved on the pre-event test so by the end of tomorrow we should have a much better idea about our prospects.”

Juho Hänninen (Driver car 11)

“No problems at all on the super special, but this isn’t where the rally is going to be decided. I’ve got a good feeling with the car so, with the right approach, I think we can get the result we want here. The experience we gained in Argentina was especially useful and I am looking forward to putting what we learned there into practice here.”

Esapekka Lappi (Driver car 12)

“The Lousada stage was a great place to have my first time in my new car: so many fans! I don’t feel nervous: just excited. I’ve been preparing for this for six months so I’m ready. But we need to build up the speed over the weekend. I think the second passage over the stages will be especially tricky, so we will approach everything step by step.”

Topics:

TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team Sporting Director Jarmo Lehtinen recently returned to competition alongside his former driver Mikko Hirvonen, with whom he took 15 WRC wins as a co-driver. The duo was aboard a classic Ford Escort RS at the TerraWise Rally in their native Finland: an all-gravel event that they won by a minute, despite not having driven together for a couple of years. But they weren’t taking it too seriously: for both of them the objective was just to have a lot of fun. And now, it’s back to work for Jarmo!

What’s next?

There are eight stages on the menu tomorrow. These are split into two loops of three stages, with service at Porto in between, plus two final runs over the 1.90-kilometre Braga street stage. The first driver will leave service in the morning at 08:59 and return just under 12 hours later, completing a total of 148.32 competitive kilometres.