Toyota has never been known for doing things by half. It’s got to be 100%. Which is why Tomiya Maekawa is calling pace notes in English – and Finnish – to Jari-Matti Latvala at this weekend’s Historic Acropolis Rally.
When he became the first Japanese driver to lead the World Rally Championship, Takamoto Katsuta demonstrated both the credentials and the value of the Toyota Gazoo Racing WRC Challenge Program. But the driver only represents half of the crew.
“The idea for the future is for Toyota to have the complete Japanese crew,” explained Latvala. “Up until this point, the Challenge drivers have had Finnish or British co-drivers because they had more experience. Now we are changing this and Tomiya is a co-driver who has been selected. He has moved from Japan to Finland to work on his skills as a co-driver and be closer with the team.”
After competing at home in Japan for almost a decade, Maekawa spent last season tackling the Finnish Rally Championship with Jarkko Nikara. Most recently, the pair competed at Rally Portugal and posted a raft of fastest times in the WRC3 category.
Maekawa made his WRC debut alongside Jarkko Nikara in Portugal earlier this month. Sitting alongside Latvala is another big step towards a WRC future
Latvala continued: “Like you know, we had some Japanese technicians and mechanics with us in the team last year and we continue to do that this season – but we were also really interested to try Tomiya in the car as well. We wanted to find some tough, some challenging events and Acropolis will definitely be that.”
This week will present the 34-year-old with his toughest test as he tackles those rough Greek roads alongside Latvala in a Toyota Celica Turbo 4WD.
“We did Tuuri [Historic Ralli] together earlier this year,” said Latvala. “That went very well. Obviously, one of the first things for Tomiya is to learn the English, which he has done very well. It was a little bit strange for me though, I haven’t made notes in English for a very, very long time!
“It was actually in the Tarzan stage on the recce, I recognised some corners and told Tomiya I hadn’t been in this stage since 2003 when I was having Carl Williamson co-driving for me. That was the last time I was using English notes.
Being flexible is key; Maekawa is mixing languages in his pacenotes for Latvala, as the last time the 18-time WRC event winner used English for his notes was over two decades ago
“Everything was going well in the recce and I’m really pleased that Tomiya is able to speak some Finnish words as well. In the recce, I was finding it a bit difficult and I wanted to have some things in Finnish – for example suppea is Finnish word for narrows, so we have kept this. My note system is more based around the numbers, it’s like Elfyn Evans’ system – so this is more straightforward to learn that the descriptive notes.”
The Historic Acropolis Rally starts on Friday evening and finishes on Sunday afternoon after tackling roads like Thiva, Elatia and Tarzan.
“It’s going to be a great event,” said Latvala. “My start to the year has been a bit mixed after we won in Spain and then crashed in Sardinia. We have had a really good preparation for this weekend – but still the weather is going to be interesting: we are expecting some heavy rain on Saturday and when the roads are quite like clay, this can be tough.
“It’s really nice to have Tomiya with me, it’s like the next part of the story.”
Come back to DirtFish.com next week to read Tomiya Maekawa’s side to that story.
