Rally Turkey: Day 1Turkish adventure begins for TOYOTA GAZOO Racing

Quotes:
Tom Fowler (Chief Engineer)

“As we have not been here before, it was important to use shakedown to check the setup that we established in our pre-event test in Portugal. From the recce we have found that the stages are a little bit rougher than was previously anticipated, so we had to make some adjustments to get the cars a little bit higher. This went well: the drivers were very happy with the cars, the times were pretty good and there were no technical problems. This rally is going to be very tough for everybody and our focus is on reliability and endurance. It is one of the hotter rallies and we have been working hard on our cooling system. From testing we were already confident that we had resolved this, and shakedown increased our confidence with the temperatures running right down where we need them to be. With tonight’s street stage complete without issues, everything is ready for tomorrow.”

Jari-Matti Latvala (Driver car 7)

“It was fascinating to see the stages for the first time in the recce: There are some nice roads as well as some that are really rough. I think it will be a very challenging rally and it will be more about endurance than speed. Already on the first run on the shakedown we had quite a big impact, so we set the ride height to the maximum and then we were working with the car around that to get some more stability. I think a lot of things will happen on this rally so it will be important to stay clean and calm, and that’s how we took the first stage as well.”

Ott Tänak (Driver car 8)

“It’s exciting to be here; it’s a very nice place to be and we have had a very nice welcome from the organisers. This was a normal opening stage without any problems. We have seen on the recce that the conditions will be very tough for the rest of the weekend, and shakedown this morning confirmed this. It looks like it will be an extremely difficult event, just as we were expecting. The feeling with the car was good on shakedown though. The reliability will be the most important thing, and a good feeling will help us to have a smooth run and a good result at the end of the rally.”

Esapekka Lappi (Driver car 9)

“The first stage was fine for me, but it was very different to how the rest of the weekend will be. The car worked well on shakedown. On the first two runs we were really competitive. Then we came back to service, went out again and the conditions had changed quite dramatically. It will be tough job for everybody on this rally: you need to take care of the car and you need to take care of the tyre wear.”

What’s next?

On Friday the crews head north-east from the service park towards Mugla for a loop of three stages, run twice either side of mid-day service. The loop begins with the longest stage of the weekend, Çetibeli, which at 38.1 kilometres could already prove crucial to the outcome of the rally.