Toyota Yaris Covers New Ground in Turkey
Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally Team face a new challenge this week on Rally Turkey, an event that has not formed part of the championship calendar since 2010. The Toyota Yaris WRC will be in action on the all-gravel event, with drivers Jari-Matti Latvala, Ott Tänak and Esapekka Lappi keen to sustain the excellent form that has yielded back-to-back victories for the team in Finland and Germany.
The rally will be based in Marmaris, on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast and will feature both smooth roads close to the town and rockier mountain tracks to the north, near Mugla. All the stages will be new to the crews, who will use intelligence gained from a pre-event recce to produce pace notes from scratch. Testing in Turkey was not permitted prior to the rally, so the team put the Yaris WRC through its paces in Portugal last week.
Tänak, winner of the last two WRC events, is cautious about the conditions and the weather. He said: “Obviously we have had some very good results recently, but I am still taking it rally-by-rally. It is difficult to have any expectations for Turkey as we don’t have a lot of know-how about the rally. Everybody is talking about it being a rough event, but we will have to wait and see how it is on the recce. We certainly know that it will be hot. I think that our pre-event test in the south of Portugal was good preparation for that and we are doing everything we can to be ready and be competitive.”
The rally will begin on Thursday evening this week with a street stage in Marmaris before two loops of three stages on Friday near Mugla. On Saturday the rally heads west for three stages all run twice, and the rally concludes on Sunday with four stages, including the Power Stage that will finish right by the service park.
ENDS
Pictures will be uploaded here during the event
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