Toyota has started going through its final preparations for Rally Turkey in an effort to finally rid the Yaris WRC of its rough rally jinx.
Toyota’s technical director Tom Fowler recently told DirtFish about the changes made to the Yaris ahead of an event where the team has always struggled.
Ott Tänak won the first Marmaris-based Rally Turkey in 2018, but the team – and the Estonian – admits it was fortunate to claim a win on an event where much of the remainder of the field fell by the wayside.
Last season Jari-Matti Latvala was the highest placed Toyota driver in sixth place.
Toyota will be running in the Itea area of Greece this week, chasing the sort of rough roads which will be found in Turkey on the September 18-20 event.
We never seem to be able to keep the same level of performance when we were going to a higher ride heightTom Fowler
World Rally Championship leader Sébastien Ogier is the first driver in the test car today (driving former Acropolis Rally stage Kaloskopi) followed by Elfyn Evans tomorrow and Kalle Rovanperä later in the week.
“We’ve worked hard on Turkey since the last time we were there,” said Fowler.
“We’ve concentrated on this area and found some reason why things have not gone so well in Turkey.
“We don’t have a problem with this in terms of performance, it’s been a jinx for us.
“We never seem to be able to keep the same level of performance when we were going to a higher ride height.”
The lack of stability and precision – particularly on the second loop of stages – was a common complaint from the drivers.
It doesn’t matter what style of roads it is, just being back behind the wheel will be goodElfyn Evans
Fowler added: “We’ve done some work to understand why and made some adjustments in the suspension geometry to counter that and we’ve definitely made some steps moving forward.”
Evans is back behind the wheel of the Yaris for the first time since dramatically crashing out of Sunday’s South Estonia Rally.
“It’ll be good to get back in the car,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter what style of roads it is, just being back behind the wheel will be good.”
While all three drivers have driven the Yaris WRC in rough gravel trim at Rally México in March, this will be the first time taking the car to its extreme ride heights to deal with what are reckoned to be the season’s roughest roads.
