The season of Toyota GAZOO Racing Rally Challenge Program drivers Takamoto Katsuta and Hiroki Arai ended on Saturday with the final rally of the Finnish Rally Championship, Pirelli Ralli, around the city of Tampere.
Pirelli Ralli is known for its challenging roads, and that was the case this year too. Some of the legendary special stages are also familiar from the Finnish round of the World Rally Championship, such as the extremely difficult and fast-paced Savo stage.
The event consisted of 120.59 special stage kilometres, with nine stages in total.
The final rally of the season went well for both drivers, who drove Ford Fiesta R5s in the SM1 class.
Hiroki Arai held his nerve and he and his co-driver, Glenn Macneall, clinched third place in the tough rally, setting fastest times on no less than three special stages along the way. Arai finished 9.6 seconds behind winner, Juha Salo, and fell only 1.8 seconds short of second place.
“I’m feeling pretty good. We made some changes to the pacenotes during last week’s testing, and that really worked,” Arai said.
“The next step that I need to take is to focus on getting my driving more natural – at the moment, driving is a lot of work and I need to concentrate hard. It needs to come naturally, without trying too hard.”
Takamoto Katsuta finished 8th in his class with his co-driver Daniel Barritt, managing to set one fastest time.
“In this rally, I did what we planned to do, i.e. finish all the stages. And on top of that, I even got one fastest stage time on SS5, so I'm very happy about that,” Katsuta said.
“The stages were really tricky and hard here! I need to continue learning recce and pacenote-making in order to be able to improve my speed in the future. Hard work and concentrating on the rallying – that’s the plan for next year.”
Chief instructor, Jouni Ampuja, was impressed with their performances on the rally:
"Arai’s performance was good. Unfortunately the gap grew a bit too big on two special stages, there’s no room for such things when you are driving for the win. After he found his routine, his pace was once again extremely good, which could be seen straightaway in the fastest stage times and in the good fight he fought right ‘til the end.
"Katsuta also set a fastest time on one special stage and he was able to finish the rally. However, Katsuta’s pace is still hindered by his lack of experience with pacenotes. His speed is always fine in testing, when he becomes familiar with the road, so now it’s just the case of getting even more of that routine for driving in actual competitions.
“There were a lot of new things this season – a move into bigger cars and driving full-length rallies too. The number of fastest stage times is very pleasing, which shows that we have been doing the right things. Those fastest times don’t come out of thin air, you know.”
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