TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team has set its sights on a successful second event for its new GR YARIS Rally1 car at Rally Sweden (February 25-27), the only real winter round of the FIA ​​World Rally Championship season held at high speed roads covered of snow and ice.

The team intends to build on a promising start to the WRC’s new Rally1 era at Rallye Monte-Carlo last month, where the hybrid-powered GR YARIS proved reliable and fast on its debut and only cruelly denied victory on the penultimate stage .

As Sweden is not part of Sébastien Ogier’s program with selected rallies this season, Esapekka Lappi will make his first start in the team colors since 2018. Kalle Rovanperä opens the road in Sweden as the highest placed driver in the position after finishing fourth and winning Power Stage at the Rallye Monte-Carlo. Elfyn Evans was part of the lead battle in round one before a small but costly mistake ended his chances for a strong result; he hopes for a repeat of the championship’s last visit to Sweden in 2020 when he made his first victory for Toyota. As in every round this season, Takamoto Katsuta will drive another GR YARIS Rally1 for the TGR WRT Next Generation.

For this year, Rally Sweden has moved further north to a new home in Umeå, northern Sweden’s largest city. Its location is closer to the Arctic Circle than the capital Stockholm, which means that extreme winter conditions are more likely. The stages will all be completely new to the WRC but the features that make it one of the most popular and spectacular rallies on the calendar will remain. Special studded tires bite into the ground to provide grip on roads lined with snow banks, which drivers lean towards to get more speed through the curves.

Cars are lined up in loose ground specifications and TOYOTA GAZOO Racing has been preparing in recent weeks with two days of testing on snow and ice for each driver: one in Finland and one in Sweden.

After a shakedown on Thursday, the rally starts on Friday morning with a loop of three stages north of Umeå. This includes the rally’s longest stage, Kamsjön, at 27.81 kilometers. All three will be repeated in the afternoon before a short ‘sprint’ stage in Umeå itself ends the day. A longer version of the Umeå stage is run twice on Saturday, as are two other tests west of town. Sunday’s final stage takes place to the northwest with a couple of stages running twice.

Quote:

Jari-Matti Latvala (Team Leader)

“Even though the trip was not on our side at Rallye Monte-Carlo we could see the reliability and speed of GR YARIS Rally1 and it gives us a lot of encouragement to go to Sweden. I have some good memories from Rally Sweden as a driver, including the first win for our team 2017. It has been a successful event for us before but everyone goes into it on the same level when it comes to experience with the new cars under these conditions.The rally will also take place in a whole new area around Umeå, where we should be guaranteed a good amount of snow and the profile of the stages will be different from what we were used to before.It’s great to welcome Esapekka back to our line-up for his first event with us this season: Like Elfyn and Kalle, he has been strong under these conditions before and I think all four TOYOTA GAZOO Racing drivers have the potential for a really good weekend if everything goes well for them. ”

Elfyn Evans (driver car 33)

“We did not start the year as we wanted in the first rally, but the only small advantage is that our road position should be a little better for Sweden. We want to capitalize on it as best we can and as always do as well as possible. Because everything is so new, there have been many different things to test during our tests on snow and ice, but overall I feel comfortable – although it is always difficult to say exactly how fast you are on this surface because things like traction vary depending on the conditions. We have also looked through the videos on the scenes provided by the organizer, and they look very fast in their places but also with some very narrow and technical sections. ”

Kalle Rovanperä (Driver 69)

“Overall, I was really happy with our weekend in Monte Carlo. We started in a difficult place but we did a lot of work with the team to improve my feeling in the car. Taking the extra points in Power Stage naturally means that we start first on the road in Sweden and will have some road cleaning to do there the first day. But we will do our best to take as many points as we can at the end of the weekend and hopefully we can still have a really good rally. In the test, we started from scratch with the snow layout for the new car and it felt a bit tricky to drive in the beginning, but together with our teammates, I think we have taken some good steps in the right direction during the two tests. “

Esapekka Lappi (Driver 4)

“I am very excited about this moment. To be able to compete at the highest level again is something I have been looking forward to for a long time. It has felt very natural to work with the team again in recent weeks and by testing. My feeling in GR YARIS Rally1 was pretty good from the beginning and it has gotten better step by step. I think the events I did with a Rally2 car last year help me a lot to understand how to best drive these cars. Rally Sweden is an event I have always liked if and I have always been competitive there.We have to remember that it has been five months since my last rally, but I think we can keep up and I want to fight for the podium – that is my lowest goal.It will not be easy but I feel it is possible. ”

press release

URL: https://toyotagazooracing.com/release/2022/#

Press Kit and event photos will be uploaded here

URL: https://www.tgr-dam.com

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