The unknown exists at every turn at Safari Rally Kenya, but world rallying’s biggest question won’t be answered in the savannah this week.
Instead, shuffle your expectations nearly 8,000 miles north-west and to Salem, Missouri: round two of the American Rally Association National Championship.
How competitive will Toyota’s new Toyota GR Corolla Rally RC2 be?
“I think going into this US championship for the first time, measuring the success is maybe slightly different than other projects that we have had ongoing in the past,” confessed Toyota technical director Tom Fowler.
“Of course, in WRC, our target is to go there and to win in Rally1, and our target is to provide a Rally2 car in which someone can win WRC2. This is absolutely clear from the beginning.
“But moving into the ARA, I think it’s a little bit of a different focus in a way that we really want to understand what the future of American rallying is going to look like. And this car is a first step into the water to understand where the championship is going to go in the future.
“And so I’m sure that there will be development of cars in the future to go there to win. But at the moment, this is the first steps to really understand what the future of this championship will look like.”
Toyota W2RC driver (but stage rallying novice) Seth Quintero debuts the car at this week’s Rally in the 100 Acre Wood, co-driven by Topi Luhtinen. The project is overseen on the ground by double World Rally champion Jonne Halttunen.
How different is the GR Corolla Rally RC2 to a GR Yaris Rally2?
Entering ARA – which features an ‘Open’ class with less restrictions – Toyota didn’t strictly need to design a Rally2-spec car, but that’s what it chose to do with the Corolla.
The car shares plenty with its GR Yaris Rally2 cousin, including the 1.6 liter, turbocharged three-cylinder engine, the Sadev transmission, five-speed sequential gearbox, rear differential and the Alcon brakes and Reiger suspension.
But this isn’t simply a Yaris (not sold in the US) with a new bodyshell to satisfy the American market.
Various components have had to be adapted to compensate for the Corolla’s longer wheelbase.
Fowler: “Everything mechanical is essentially identical. Where the differences come is actually probably in the place where there’s the most number of small parts that are all put together, which is in the assembly of the bodyshell.
“The bodyshell itself of course is a Corolla, not a Yaris, so a lot of new parts had to be made to fabricate the safety cage and the suspension pickup points around the chassis to take those parts from the Yaris.
“The best way to look at it is that all of the running gear and the mechanical parts are identical to a Yaris but the bodyshell obviously is a bespoke bodyshell specifically for Corolla, but using all of the design information from Yaris and either scaled or changed to fit the new size of body.”
Which car is faster?
Toyota has all the data having developed both cars, so could answer this question if it wanted.
Naturally, it doesn’t want to. After all, the two aren’t going to compete head-to-head, so what does it matter?
Fowler was prepared to offer some insight into the advantages and disadvantages of each machine, though.
“There’s pros and cons between the Yaris and the Corolla,” he said. “In terms of the performance difference, one of the key areas that we had to work on with the Corolla is obviously the weight because naturally a bigger car is going to be a heavier car and this is obviously something that is detrimental to the performance.
“But a lot of work was done in order to reduce the weight of the Corolla in order to get it as close as possible to its Yaris equivalent. So I would say one of the disadvantages that comes from this transition from Yaris to Corolla was that there was an increase in the amount of bodyshell weight, but this has been mitigated through the work done by the engineers and the designers to reduce that as much as possible.
“In terms of advantages, compared to the Yaris the Corolla is a slightly longer car so the wheelbase is a bit longer, and this brings some advantages in faster rallies. And actually, as it turns out, a lot of the rallies in the US tend to be quite high-speed roads, a bit less technical compared to European rallies.
“So actually, the change in the size of the body actually lends itself towards the championship in which it’s going to be used.
“I think if you wanted a car for the World Rally Championship, and all the average stages you need to do in Europe, I would still choose the Yaris, but going to the US and knowing the characteristics of the roads over there then the Corolla is having some advantages.”
