Toyota won a podium in its first rally in the World Rally Championship after a 17-year absence from the series. Jari-Matti Latvala finished second at the Monte Carlo event. But the team did not have a straightforward weekend and that was not only on track.
There were some problems with the new Yaris WRC and the team must repair them on time for the next round in Sweden. For one, Toyota has to change the upper mounting points of the rear shock absorbers. The problem there is the distance between the underbody and the spring strut is by 3 cm too long and that is contradicting FIA’s regulations.
That poses serious problems for the team. The crew at the Puuppola base in Finland had to recalculate the suspension, while Toyota Motorsport in Germany needs to take care of the aerodynamics. Then two new shells must be redone. And all needs to happen until February 5th. Technical scruteneering in Sweden is on February 7th.
Another problem concerns the engine department – modifying the valves. The reason is that they were treated with a prohibited material, called Beryllium – it is banned for years now. This entails further issues for the engine and control units. As the engine is a more difficult task, the team has a prolonged deadline and needs to fix it for the Mexico event at the beginning of March. As the third round is a non-European rally, the date is probably not later than February 20th as transport to Leon will happen earlier.
All this is probably the reason for the delayed Esappeka Lappi debut – planned for Corsica (in France at the beginning of April) but moved to Portugal in late May.
It is particularly interesting that despite all the Toyota Yaris inconsistencies with the rules, there were no signs of discontent neither from the FIA, nor from another team
Team’s boss Tommi Makinen demonstrated happiness after the Monte Carlo podium. He’s convinced this performance showed that Toyota can win in 2017.
“I’m very happy. This result goes a long way beyond our expectations, as this is really only a development year. We didn’t have much experience but our rally was nearly perfect. Both crews reacted very well to the changing circumstances. They were able to set stage times in the top three, which is very encouraging. Jari-Matti had a problem with a sensor during the rally, which was distracting him, and there was a worry that if he stopped the car in the stage he might not be able to restart. But how he coped with this was very impressive. A big thank you to the team for all the hard work so far. We still have a lot of work ahead but this is a good start. After this, I feel pretty confident we have a good chance of winning this year”, Makinen said.
