The first full day of action saw the crews tackle eight stages, including two super special stages at the end of the day. The total amount of competitive kilometres was 128km’s.
Of course, leading the championship meant that Thierry and Martijn would open the road and have the best of the road conditions. We’d already had one short stage with Adrien and Alex holding the lead from Ott and Martin and local hero Takamoto and Aaron holding third.
Into SS2 Isegami’s Tunnel 1 – 23.67 km and Thierry was fastest from Ott, with Elfyn third. All three crews gained positions and were the new top three overall. The two Toyota’s of Takamoto and Seb both suffered punctures and fell down the leaderboard sadly.
Next up was SS3 Inabu / Shitara 1 – 19.38 km and Seb was fastest from Elfyn and Ott. The Frenchman gained eight positions and moved into tenth overall. Takamoto was also climbing the leaderboard moving into fifth overall.
The final morning stage SS3 Inabu / Shitara 1 – 19.38 km and Elfyn was fastest from Seb and Ott. There was drama for Thierry though as he started to lose time only setting the tenth best time in the stage. He was suffering with a lack of power and lost a huge amount of time but was still third overall.
After the tyre fitting zone it was back to SS5 Isegami’s Tunnel 2 – 23.67 km and Ott was fastest from Seb and Elfyn. The Estonian moved ahead of his former M-Sport teammate and into the lead. Meanwhile Thierry continued to lose time and fell down to eighth and was now over three minutes from the lead. Takamoto was now into third overall as well. There was huge drama for Andreas though as he crashed his i20 and blocked the stage. All the crews behind were given a notional time.
Onto SS6 Inabu / Shitara 2 – 19.38 km and Ott again was fastest from Seb and Elfyn. Seb was climbing the leaderboard with his quick times, now into fifth overall. Thierry continued to fall down the leaderboard, losing a further six positions and was now over five minutes behind the leader. At this stage he was around half a minute from tenth place.
Another stage win for Elfyn followed in SS7 Shinshiro 2 – 17.41 km and Ott and Seb were again second and third fastest. Thierry lost nearly two minutes on this one and was now over seven minutes behind the leader and now over a minute from the top ten. Further to the front of the field, Adrien moved past Takamoto and into third overall. The Frenchman decided to run the extra pod lights, and this meant that he could see the road much better.
The last two stages were just the short 2.54km Okazaki SSS and these stages are not really rallying to be honest.
Let’s take a look at the top positions and hear from the drivers.
Classification after Day One
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Hyundai Motorsport
Ott Tänak
“It’s been a long day, but a solid effort. The car was not too difficult to drive this morning, but we had some understeer and couldn’t perform at the level we would have liked. However, after the tricky first stage of the afternoon, we managed to improve the balance on the higher grip tarmac, and I felt a lot better on those two stages. Let’s see what tomorrow brings and the conditions we will face – there has been rain here and there, and we have some new stages too.”
Round 12, Rally Japan
21-24 November 2024
Ott Tanak, Martin Jarveoja, Hyundai i20 N Rally1 Hybrid
Photographer: Dufour Fabien
Worldwide copyright: Hyundai Motorsport GmbH
Thierry Neuville
“At the moment, we don’t know exactly what happened to cause our technical issue. Of course, we are disappointed, but it is what it is. There are two more days to come, and they have to be excellent now. It is a shame as we were lying in second position, comfortable in the car, and managing the risk with our speed – third would have been enough today, and that was our target, but in the end the problem occurred and there was nothing we could have done.”
Andreas Mikkelsen
“We were running with a hard tyre on the front right of the car when we came into a slippery section. There was a river of water running down on the right, which we caught and lost all grip, so we crashed. It’s very disappointing as we were trying to increase our speed in the afternoon, and our split times were looking promising, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t reach the finish. It’s not what we wanted from today, but hopefully the car will be fixed for tomorrow, with everything to drive for on Sunday.”
Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT
Elfyn Evans
“It was a demanding start this morning with a lot of grip changes. Some of them were difficult to read so we had a few slides here and there like probably everybody had. I think the tyre choice for the morning was pretty good – we took the benefit of our extra hard tyres later on – but it wasn’t such a straightforward choice for the afternoon. This time the grip was probably better than we expected and so our tyre choice maybe wasn’t perfect, but things did get better through the loop, and we finished it positively. It’s all still open for tomorrow. As a team we’re all still in the game and we’ll keep doing our best right until the end.”
Sébastien Ogier
“This first stage of the day here in Japan is always a very challenging one and not my luckiest one. For the second time in three years, we picked up a puncture in a similar section of the stage. I couldn’t really feel where it happened, so it was very disappointing and hard to take, but that’s the way it goes. We tried from the next stage to keep the focus, which is not easy in this situation, and at least we could recover some positions already. At the moment it’s not enough and we still need to get some more places for the team, but there are many stages still to go, anything can happen, and we keep fighting.”
Takamoto Katsuta
“This morning we did not have the start that we planned in the first stage, where we unfortunately had a tyre off the rim. That was very unfortunate and disappointing but luckily we didn’t lose too much time and could still come back to fourth overall at the end of the day, which is not so bad considering how it started this morning. I had to change my approach and drive a bit more on the safe side to gain positions when others had problems, but it worked out OK. There’s still a long way to go and many things have already happened, so we don’t give up. I just need to keep focused on doing my own job for the team and on my own driving.”
Summary
Well, what a first full day of action. Championship leaders Thierry and Martijn had a nightmare day, losing power and time hand over fist. Meanwhile their teammates Ott and Martin were holding the lead.
Let’s see what Saturday holds in store!
