The team principal of Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT, Jari-Matti Latvala, says that his team must get into the competition on Sundays despite the good results his drivers have delivered so far this season.
The Japanese team is currently behind the championship leader Hyundai for thirteen points after the sixth WRC round while their gap was at four points at the end of Rally de Portugal in favor of Hyundai. Toyota and Hyundai share the same number of victories so far with Kalle Rovanpera and Sebastien Ogier winning with the Yaris whereas three different drivers have won for the Alzenau-based team (Esapekka Lappi, Thierry Neuville, Ott Tanak). Nevertheless, a question mark is the fact that the main title contender of Neuville and Tanak, Elfyn Evans, has not been victorious with the Yaris yet and it seems to be struggling with his car on the latest two WRC rounds which were held in Portugal and Sardinia. Moreover, it must be mentioned that Hyundai and Toyota have scored 111 and 94 points respectively on Sundays which means that Hyundai managed to get 17 points more than its rival team. More specifically, the Hyundai drivers have collected 69 points from SuperSunday and 42 points from the Powerstage compared to Toyota drivers who have scored 61 points from SuperSunday and 33 points from the Powerstage. It is obvious that Neuville and Tanak are trying very hard to collect as many points they can for the drivers' title and as a consequence of that they offer valuable points to their team whereas Elfyn Evans is the only one who is more interested in scoring points on Sundays as Takamoto Katsuta, Sebastien Ogier and Kalle Rovanpera are thinking of getting to the finish line of a rally and to be safe through in order to claim the points from the Saturday classification.
"We have had, let’s say, good results", Latvala said.
"But we need more attack on Sunday.
"This is clear.
"We are not playing tactics with the drivers slowing down or things like that.
"But general level, we just need to be more in a competition, get into the competition on Sunday rather than thinking about just winning the event – you have to also think about the separate competition on Sunday".
Source: DirtFish.com
Photo Credits: Toyota
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