He’s finally done it.
After years of soaring high and crushing lows, Takamoto Katsuta has achieved the result he always wanted: a win in the World Rally Championship.
For it to have happened in Kenya, the place he scored his first podium, makes it all the more special.
“First podium was here in 2021, first victory here now in 2026 – we have always been very strong because the team is strong and the car is strong,” Katsuta told DirtFish.
“But this year proved that maybe something special luck. It’s crazy what we have seen this whole weekend. We started with a very difficult situation without pacenote [because of a broken intercom], driving in one of the difficult stages with that condition. [We had a] double puncture twice and we had no tires anymore but still we came here and it’s incredible.”
Katsuta was emotional at the final stop-line
Katsuta could barely contain his emotion when he arrived to the final stop-line, taking his time to digest the moment and fighting tears as he spoke to the stage-end reporter.
All the pent-up emotion from near misses of the past came flooding to the surface, but Katsuta never lost faith he could achieve a victory because those around him knew that he was capable.
“I have very, very good team-mates Kalle [Rovanperä], Séb [Ogier], Elfyn [Evans], Oliver [Solberg] and Sami [Pajari], and also you know I have a big support from Ott [Tänak] now,” he said.
“Everybody’s saying that I can do it, just you need to find the small pieces together. Sometimes of course it was very hard for me to understand because I was not able to take it yet and [I was] always second, second, second or third, [the] one step forward I was not [able to] make it.
“So yeah I had doubts [about] myself at some point but still I was believing because everybody was saying that and they always supporting me as well. At the same time our team, everybody is giving me really big, big support – every single person that helps me and gives me confidence also in the car.
“So I think all together this became finally [enough to] bring me to on top of podium.”
