One of the Rally Sweden’s biggest post-event storylines was Takamoto Katsuta’s revelation that Ott Tänak has been helping him.
Tänak walked away from the World Rally Championship at the end of 2025, but has still kept a glancing eye on proceedings.
With him no longer competing, or representing rival team Hyundai, Tänak has been a perfect font of knowledge for Katsuta to lean on.
But Tänak doesn’t view himself as Katsuta’s coach, merely a friend offering an avenue for the Japanese to offload.
“I mean, personally, I can’t do too much,” Tänak told DirtFish. “Obviously, we know that, in the end, it’s themselves, it’s the drivers who need to do the job. I can just help to support him or help him to find a bit of self-confidence and so on.
“I’m not his coach or no-one, I’m just like a friend and basically he asked me already at the end of the last year if he could speak to me or if he could call me from time to time and yes obviously now it’s been starting to be more often that the guy’s calling again!
“I try to be available and it’s more about listening than than saying something. I think quite often you let the guy do the speaking and in the end he finds the answer, what he was looking for by just speaking himself.
“It seems like he needs just somebody to speak himself empty and feel somehow relaxed and maybe also to get some confidence that maybe if he’s thinking something very wrong – then probably I would say it. But if there is nothing too much going wrong, then I guess he just needs to do his job.”
Katsuta has eight WRC podium finishes to his name so far, but a maiden win continues to elude him.
Tänak feels this is Katsuta’s biggest learning: understanding how to manage a rally.
“Obviously, it’s always a long game over the weekend,” said the 2019 world champion. “Of course, every rally has its own challenges: some of them are more sprint style. I guess some others are more endurance and some of them lottery as well.
Katsuta has challenged for WRC victory, but never yet got over the line
“But I guess the main target for him now is just to stay close to the top as much as possible. And yeah, when it’s his day, it’s his day. So I mean, yeah, in Monte he had, I think it was second day, which definitely was not his day, all the things happening. In Sweden, he still had much better days. It’s the way the rallying works and I guess it just needs the understanding of how you need to play it.”
Next week’s Safari Rally is Katsuta’s most successful event to date though, with three of the Toyota driver’s eight podiums claimed in Kenya.
“For sure, he has managed it quite well there,” Tänak added. “Hopefully he will take the same approach and just use his experience and his feelings. You can’t force it, that’s for sure. You need to have the feeling for it. You can’t do more than you are capable of doing.
“As long as you stay in your limits, everything is possible. Work on yourself to be better every next rally. I mean, yeah, for sure there are a lot of elements and, in the end, I can’t really do much.
“I mean I can’t drive for him, so he needs to do the driving and he has all the team around him who is supporting him. He has every tool that is needed, so I guess if he keeps doing his job, it’s good as long as you are improving.”
Katsuta has all the support around him to succeed, says Tänak
Toyota technical director Tom Fowler feels Tänak is a strong reference for Katsuta, as he’s been in the same position in his career before.
“Taka and Ott have been friends for many years,” Fowler told DirtFish. “When Ott was in the team with Taka in the past, they got on very well. And I know that Taka has a lot of respect for Ott in what he achieved and also for his opinion in terms of developing the car and setting the car up. So their relationship started like that.
“And I think now what Taka is looking for is someone who’s really been in this situation where you have really strong performance like Taka has, but there’s mistakes coming and going.
“And I think he sees Ott of the past, when he was trying to break into WRC, as really having been in this exact position that he feels that he’s in now, and so probably is one of the best suited people to know what it feels like to in one rally be celebrated as the hero on the podium and in the very next rally make a big mistake.
“And I think that Ott can really help him, certainly psychologically, with how to handle this.”
