The team principal of Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT, Jari-Matti Latvala, explains the reason why his team had to interrupt its test with the 2022 Rally1 car for Rallye Monte Carlo following by Elfyn Evans's crash with that in France.
The Japanese team was in France two weeks ago to test its new hybrid Yaris GR in tarmac with Kalle Rovanpera having been the first driver who completed the test with this car.
Elfyn Evans was the second driver who would test the Yaris in Alsace, but his test was interrupted due to the crash he had.
As a result of this incident, Sebastien Ogier was not able to do his debut test with the Yaris as Toyota did not have enough spare parts to fix the damaged car, so the team decided to postpone his test for later.
"This was good", Latvala said.
"This was the first accident to happen with a Rally1 car so we were very positive from this side.
"We are happy about this, the safety measures and the way everything was working.
"It was not a huge accident.
"The biggest problem and the reason we couldn’t continue with the test is that we were missing parts and components.
"Because this is a new car, we haven’t yet been able to produce some of the panels and things like that and that’s why we had to bring the car back to Finland to get some of those parts sorted for the next test.
"The chassis was OK and it wasn’t the case that we were missing anything or any parts on the chassis.
"It was unfortunate not to get Ogier onboard.
"He starts the Monte test next week.
"I spoke with Elfyn after the accident and he was pretty OK, but he was himself a bit disappointed that he wasn’t going to be able to hear the comments from Séb also.
"This was a not a nice thing from my side to miss those words from Séb, but we will get there and I’m sure it will be very interesting!".
Source: DirtFish.com
Photo Credits: Julien Pixelrallye
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