Why Toyota’s so keen to keep up its “home” WRC advantage

Toyota team principal Jari-Matti Latvala is looking to make home advantage count on this weekend’s Arctic Rally Finland, with the team’s Yaris WRC honed on roads similar to the ones in Rovaniemi.

Ever since Toyota returned to the World Rally Championship in 2017, it is yet to be defeated in Finland. Esapekka Lappi won Rally Finland in 2017, with Ott Tänak taking victory in both 2018 and 2019.

As a winter rally, Arctic Rally is a very different proposition to Rally Finland in Jyväskylä but its nature is similar, and Toyota has strong form on snow and ice too – with only Thierry Neuville’s 2018 Rally Sweden victory halting the Yaris since 2017.

Toyota is in a strong vein of form after taking a clear 1-2 finish with Sébastien Ogier and Elfyn on the Monte Carlo Rally, while the other cars of Kalle Rovanperä and Takamoto Katsuta both also came home in the top six.

Latvala said on Thursday that he feels it would be a missed opportunity for Toyota if Hyundai were to win given the strength of its Yaris WRC on this kind of terrain.

“This is our home rally, our car is tested and developed on the Finnish road conditions so for sure we expect to be competitive here,” said Latvala, when asked by DirtFish what Toyota could achieve this weekend.

“We hope we are fighting for the victory here, of course we have to look that the victory here would help a lot in the championship because there are rallies coming during the year where we know Hyundai have been strong, so the events which are strong for us of course we need to make the results on those events, thinking about the championship.

“I would like to see as many Toyota’s in the top three as possible.”

Mood in the Hyundai camp is more cautious, with former Toyota driver Tänak admitting it will be tough for Hyundai to take on its main rival this weekend.

“We try to do as much as we can, we did some testing as everyone but we also did an extra event in Estonia to match Toyota as they’ve been testing in Jyväskylä so it’s a challenge,” he said.

“Of course we hope we are close because we know Toyota is going to be very, very strong and then if we can be close then it’s a good thing. That’s what we’ve been working from and hopefully we can challenge them.

“But I mean yes generally, I think it’s not honest at the moment to give any clear feedback. The test at least I did was in quite a snowy condition and same with the event in Estonia, it had quite a bit of snow, so this one now here it looks like it has a more icy base and as they are cleaning the roads as well it will be probably much more grip and yeah, I think the conditions are not going to be like we were testing.”

Team-mate Thierry Neuville was more pessimistic, adding: “I can’t say that I was 100% happy about the preparation and the feeling, even if it wasn’t bad.”

When asked if there was a particular aspect of the preparation he felt was lacking, Neuville replied: “It was really challenging, despite driving in Estonia already, to judge the performance, to be honest.

“I have driven against Ott only in Otepää, where he was [cleaning] roads, I was cleaning the road as well. But also I felt like in himself, [we are] not really knowing what our real performance is.

“If you compare with last year’s preparation, the car feels slower but I think one of the reasons is obviously that the conditions are completely different.”

“We suspect that the Toyota is going to be very fast, from last year’s experience and also from Monte Carlo speed,” he added.

“We had probably, for my feeling, a better chance to win Monte Carlo than to win [Arctic].

“But to be honest, I have always had good speed in Sweden over the last couple of years, and I hope that with clever driving we can still bring home a good result for the team.

“And my team-mates anyhow, they will have a strong road position, so I expect them to also take a lot of points for the team because as we know the powerstage is going to be important as well this year. We need to take everything we can.

“Let’s try to hope to benefit from road position compared to the two cars in front of me, and all behind. We will be pushing to the maximum.”