Quickly up to speed in their new cars, Ogier and Evans traded the lead with each other from Friday morning until Saturday afternoon. Evans led into the final day's four stages with an advantage of 4.9 seconds over his team-mate. But their third-placed rival was only 1.5s further back, and posted a string of fastest times to ultimately deny the
Ogier edged Evans for second overall on the rally-ending Power Stage, where he just missed out on the fastest time by 0.012 seconds. His second-place together with co-driver
Rovanpera--who at 19-years-old is the youngest ever full-time factory driver in the WRC--moved up to fifth place with co-driver
Takamoto Katsuta made it four Toyota Yaris WRCs in the top seven with his best finish to-date at the start of an eight-round campaign with the TOYOTA GAZOO Racing Rally Challenge Program, navigated by
Quotes:
"The 2020 season of the FIA World Rally Championship has just started. This year, Rally Japan is in the calendar, which will make it a particularly exciting season for us. For
P.S.
To Sebastien and Julien,
I know that you would have liked to continue your consecutive victories at your home event. Let's make our Yaris "ever-better" together and try to win as much as possible. We hate to lose!"
"It has been an excellent weekend for us. Of course, there is a small disappointment about today and missing out on the victory. We are always learning, and the drivers didn't have the perfect feeling with the car this morning. We made some changes to the setup later on, and they found good speed again at the end. We are competing at the highest level and it is so, so tight. The overall result is still incredible for our first rally with our new drivers: Not just to have Sebastien and Elfyn both on the podium, but also for Kalle to finish fifth in his first rally at the top level. It is very promising for the future."
"I feel good honestly, it's a positive result. Of course, I had hoped to deliver even more and bring the team a win straight away. But it's always such a huge challenge to adapt to a new environment, especially on such a challenging rally, so I think we can be happy. I tried to stay in my comfort zone the whole weekend, not overdo it. We missed it by just a little bit, but 22 points is very good for the championship. There were some good moments during the weekend where we felt good in the car, somewhere I didn't have enough confidence to really push the limits, but I really feel this car's potential. I really enjoyed to drive it and I'm sure with a little bit more time, we'll make great things together."
"Obviously I feel a little bit disappointed today because I think we had the potential to win the rally. It's difficult now because when you lead the rally, your expectations are raised and the win becomes the target of course. But it's generally been a positive weekend. Unfortunately, I didn't quite the feeling that I needed today. I was pushing hard but the speed wasn't coming so naturally. I wasn't nailing every corner and that ultimately cost us the handful of seconds we missed out by. We still have a little bit of learning to do, but overall it's not a bad start and we can build on it."
"It has been a nice weekend. It was really tricky learning a new car in these conditions--and I think the conditions were really tricky this year, as they were changing a lot. It was getting better all the time and when there were conditions I was more familiar with, I could do a bit better. There were so many things I learned during the weekend. It really helps to have a clean rally at the start of the season and also some good points."
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