Takamoto Katsuta has almost awkwardly accepted his position in the World Rally Championship table.
When announced as part of Toyota Gazoo Racing’s star-studded roster of drivers at its traditional post Rally Japan team launch last year, the Japanese charger confidently told DirtFish he wanted 2026 to be a building year before hopefully putting together a title challenge in 2027.
Fighting for the title in 2026 was never part of the script, nor the plan.
Yet after four events, Katsuta’s name topped the table. After six, he remains second – 12 points from the summit.
Admittedly Katsuta’s performances in the last two events, Rally Islas Canarias and Rally Portugal, haven’t been those of a title contender, being outperformed by all four of his team-mates (finishing ahead of Sébastien Ogier and Sami Pajari in Portugal through late tire drama and Oliver Solberg in Canarias because he crashed).
Katsuta’s true capability lies somewhere between these two extremes. He’s perhaps not a championship challenger on merit yet, but sitting this high in the standings is useful experience as he looks towards becoming one in the future.
The key thing to learn is running so far up the running order on the opening leg (or legs) of an event. In Portugal, Katsuta ran second of the 11 Rally1 drivers and faced the challenge of sweeping the stages and minimizing the time loss to his rivals.
In order to compensate for that, he tried a different setup that, in theory, should’ve helped him running so far up the order. The thinking was correct as it worked in testing, but unfortunately not on the rally.
“Portugal was a very difficult weekend for me, especially the first two days,” Katsuta told DirtFish. “Without proper service, we tried a new kind of new setup. We all knew that there is a risk, but I decided to take it and unfortunately it didn’t work so well.”
Explaining why he took that risk, and what the new setup was, Katsuta added: “Just because I am second on the road, which is quite new for me, and also a lot of road cleaning and I have seen that there’s some benefit from this setup from the test so I thought it can work. But there was some doubt and I was not sure.
Katsuta said he "messed up" in Portugal
“Of course if I take a comfortable way then I’m easily losing time if it’s pretty dry and you know second car on the road, so that’s why I took the risk. But yeah it just didn’t work.
“It was let’s say more floaty and I couldn’t feel the grip. So there was grip for sure, but I was not able to use it. That was the reason [I struggled].”
Katsuta “came back” in the second half of the event however, helped by a full service on Friday night where he could adapt his setup, and wet weather which transformed the stages.
“Yeah, [it was] totally different,” he said. “I mean, I felt more feeling with the car and, you know, you could have more confidence and even when you lose a bit of the grip, still there was some feeling, so easier to drive at first.
“But yeah, this is also kind of part of learning. At the end I decided to take risks. Nothing wrong with the team, I just messed up myself.”
