Τakamoto Katsuta reflects on the weekend he had at Rally Italia Sardegna and keeps the positives from that event as he says that his pace was good with his Yaris.
The Japanese lost almost twenty seconds in Stage 4 when he overshot a left-hander and slid into a rock. His bad luck continued on Saturday morning as Toyota confirmed his retirement for the rest of the day after his Yaris carried a radiator issue in Stage 8 due to a water splash. From this incident, the front end of his car was damaged and he completed SS8 with less engine power, but he and Aaron Johnston tried to fix the issues for Stage 9. Unfortunately, they stopped twice on the road section before the start of Stage 9 meaning that it was game over for them. Finally, the crew restarted on Sunday under the regulations of Rally2 and scored three points in Powerstage, but the most positive thing is that they won two stages in Sardinia.
"Our pace was good from the start on Friday morning: we did a good run in the second stage and it was nice to be fastest", Katsuta said.
"Then the long stage was very difficult and slippery, I did an overshoot and we were quite lucky that we could continue after that.
"Unfortunately in SS8 I had the wrong approach for the watersplash; it was especially deep and I came a little too fast and had to brake into the dip, so we got quite a lot of damage and could not continue.
"It was a big disappointment and I will try to learn from it for the future.
"When we restarted on Sunday, I again felt very good with the car and I tried to push in the Power Stage.
"We got some points from there and it was good to finish the weekend like this.
"I’m looking forward to Kenya and hope we can get another good result there this year".
Photo Credits: Toyota
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