What chairman said.
When Toyota came back to WRC in 2017, it was at Rally Sweden that Jari-Matti brought the first victory to TGR. Since then, TGR was able to win in Sweden with Ott in 2019, Elfyn in 2020 and Kalle in 2022. Snow stages are a kind of home road for TGR-WRT which is based in Finland, and all the crews gave their best this weekend to achieve the best result on our specialty surface. Unfortunately, it did not lead to the result we hoped for this time, but their challenges surely made our car and the team stronger.
I heard that the damage to Takamoto’s car after his accident was the heaviest so far, but the mechanics fixed it within the limited time and Takamoto and Aaron were able to restart the next day. The accident itself was unfortunate but I believe the team became even stronger after that. I’m really thankful to everybody who worked on his car.
It seems that Elfyn is feeling he is missing the last piece. I feel like I’m seeing Jari-Matti in 2019. Everybody in the team will keep working together for him to find the last piece that he has been looking for. We’ll do our ever-better car making for Elfyn.
For Kalle, I’m sure he is not feeling any pressure as a defending champion and I hope he will enjoy driving again on the next round in Mexico.
Rally Mexico in one month from now will be a hot rally which is completely different from this one. I trust the team that they will continue working hard to make our cars even more comfortable, reliable and fun to drive for our drivers.
P.S. to Ott
Congratulations on your first victory in the new team!
