If we told you a World Rally champion had been helping Takamoto Katsuta this season, would you be surprised?
After all, Kalle Rovanperä’s friendship with the Japanese is well known. Katsuta is even carrying Rovanperä’s ‘full send’ slogan on his helmet this year.
But Rovanperä’s not been the man advising Katsuta through 2026. Instead, it’s the other guy who departed the service park after 2025.
“I’m working with Ott [Tänak] now quite a lot,” Katsuta revealed to DirtFish, “and basically every stage he’s been chatting a bit. Actually, it’s working very well and thanks to him.”
Katsuta and Tänak also enjoy a brilliant relationship; Tänak driving for Toyota when Katsuta made his way through the Challenge Program.
Today, the pair are in regular contact as Katsuta attempts to propel himself to the next level.
Tänak and Katsuta have long enjoyed a good relationship, even when they were rivals
“It helps a lot,” Katsuta said. “I’m a huge fan of him.
“It’s so easy because I have huge, huge respect for it. Everybody knows he’s one of the fastest guys. Everybody knows he’s world champion, so it’s easy to trust everything. And he knows the driver’s feeling and what kind of risk we are taking in the car, what is happening in the car.
“I so appreciate how he’s helping me and supporting me in this way. This is why I really wanted to win [in Sweden], but I just need to keep pushing like Ott is doing and that’s it.”
Katsuta did appear very relaxed at the start of the Monte Carlo Rally, winning the shakedown stage and commenting: “New season, fresh mind, I’ll just try my best to deliver the results. This year is quite a big year for me and I will try everything I can to do things in a bit more of a clever way than last year. I’m happy and really confident.”
The head dropped a little in Sweden when it transpired one of his tires had lost a small number of studs, but he still claimed the eighth podium of his WRC career.
The target is to show that rally-winning speed everywhere.
“Let’s say half of the rallies I felt like I had a very good speed last year. So definitely those rallies I will continue to improve even more,” Katsuta said. “Other rallies where I struggle, for sure I try to improve it. Let’s see, I feel much more confident every single second or every single moment, so I will try.”
Did Hyundai miss a trick?
Hyundai is the team most affected by Tänak’s decision to leave the WRC, as it lost a world champion with 22 rally wins.
But if it couldn’t secure his services behind the wheel, should it have tried to secure him in an advisory role instead of allowing him to help a Toyota driver?
“Potentially,” Hyundai sporting director Andrew Wheatley told DirtFish.
“I think we said this time and time again last year, in an ideal world we’d have Ott in the team.
“[But] I think it’s probably easier for Ott to do that with a driver that he hasn’t necessarily competed against side by side perhaps, maybe, I don’t know. But for sure Ott is super experienced, super knowledgeable, super cool. He’s been there, done it, got the T-shirt, so I’m sure he can really help somebody else to go forward.”
