Toyota driver Takamoto Katsuta has offered a deeper explanation into the issues which he felt cost him the chance to fight to the end of Rally Sweden – but didn’t cost him his maiden World Rally Championship win.
The Japanese, who finished second to team-mate Elfyn Evans for the second year in succession, led the Umeå-based WRC counter at the end of the first full day, but slipped back with a troubled Saturday morning aboard his GR Yaris Rally1.
“I had no idea what was happening in the morning at that moment,” Katsuta told DirtFish. “I said to the engineers that something must be wrong on the car or something because it was a totally different feeling – the car doesn’t turn and there was no grip. It was scary as hell.
“In the end we found something not as normal effect from the tires. We were missing a lot of studs because of just a pure ice condition from the morning. It was a bit strange. I don’t want to say too much because I know the guys are working very hard to improve this. But, of course, it’s very painful that… I just wanted to fight to the end, then you never know what can happen. This is the reason why I’m not happy.”
Katsuta's wait for a maiden WRC victory goes on
Hankook’s Steven Cho offered the following explanation to the Saturday morning issues Katsuta talked of.
“At the end of the morning loop, on his left rear tire he brought to my attention there may have been some stud loss on that tire. We had a look at it and what we can say now, typically at the end of the loop, it’s not uncommon to see two or three studs missing from a set of tires. On Taka’s tire, the count was a little bit higher than that, I think about nine or 10 [studs missing].
“From a numbers perspective it’s more than the average we see on the other tires. But out of 384 [studs], it’s about 2.5%. It was a bit of an anomaly, we haven’t ascertained the reason for that.
“There has to be more analysis and I’m sure the guys will look into it tonight as well. There are many reasons why such a thing could happen and we’re not talking about a significant number of studs missing. With our tires, our stud retention has been really good anyway, so by that standard it was a little higher than usual.”
Looking at the 14.3-second gap separating his car and the sister Yaris of rally winner Evans, Katsuta added: “I’d say even without that, I’d say it won’t change any result. Elfyn was strong enough. I don’t think the result changes, he deserved it. I’m very happy for him and for the team. I just need to forget about it and improve my own things to move forward.
“For me, this was maybe one of the cleanest rallies. OK, last year in Finland I had a good rally. But this rally is in quite demanding conditions and I was super comfortable with the car. Not really [any] moments. OK, small snowbanks and things, but nothing really major. I think it’s getting better and better – just need to keep like this.”
