Takamoto Katsuta feels ready to fight for the World Rally Championship title in 2027, after leading the standings and winning his first two events in 2026.
The Toyota driver secured back-to-back victories in Kenya and Croatia, putting him in the championship lead for the first time in his career.
While team-mate, and eventual world champion, Elfyn Evans moved ahead of him from Rally Islas Canarias onwards, Katsuta remained his closest challenger for the first half of the season – lying 11 points adrift after round 8 of 13 in Greece.
However Katsuta’s season nosedived with punctures in Estonia, an off on the Finland powerstage, two crashes in three days in Paraguay and a stage one off in Chile too.
Katsuta finished the season with sixth place in Sardinia, leaving him sixth and 68 miles adrift in the final standings.
The first two thirds of Katsuta's 2026 were strong - including two victories in Kenya and Croatia (pictured)
“Of course, the beginning of the season until the mid-season went very well,” Katsuta told DirtFish.
“We were basically quite well fighting for the championship until midway through, but then after the summer it went a bit the wrong way and we were struggling a lot and we were not able to, you know, continue to fight for championship.
“But yeah sometimes it’s part of rallying and we’ll try to fix it for the future, these kind of things, and try to develop and improve.
“Next year we will try again.”
Katsuta told DirtFish back in 2025 that his aim was to be in a position to fight for the championship in 2027. One year on, he sticks by that target.
“Yeah, for sure. Just always it’s never easy to be in this team, because car is fantastic, team is strong but at the same time there are such strong drivers!” he smiled.
“You can imagine like how many champions are now in the team. It will be tough but that’s why we call this the world championship. I just keep pushing and never give up.”
Katsuta believes his biggest area of improvement is bouncing back stronger from setbacks, citing Paraguay as the clearest example.
“When something went wrong, for example Paraguay and some of the couple rallies, I didn’t manage to come back strong enough, so I think these kind of things I need to fix,” he explained.
“Otherwise it was very good learning for the whole season, so all good.”
