‘Damage limitation’ exercise for Johnston and Katsuta

AFTER the thrill of a podium chase in Portugal, Aaron Johnston and Takamoto Katsuta were involved in a ‘damage limitation’ exercise in Italy at the weekend.

The Toyota Gazoo Racing Team Next Generation crew had high hopes going into Rally Italia Sardegna but due to their success in previous rounds they were third on the road, which meant they suffered the worst of the early conditions and struggled to match the pace of the later runners.

Add into the mix in-car temperatures of around 80 degrees centigrade, visibility issues due to the dust and a radiator problem they had to fix at the road-side and then manage for a long period of time and their sixth placed finish looks like a positive outcome for the pair and their team in terms of Championship points.

“It was bad luck [the radiator issue] but thankfully we were able to repair it at the road-side ourselves and manage it for the rest of the loop and bring the car back to still compete for points,” Johnston explained.

“It was nice to be able to repair it at the side of the road and it held up so we could manage it for the remaining three stages. Now, we did lose a reasonable amount of time but we were still there, we didn’t have to super rally and it meant we could score some reasonable points for the manufacturer and driver’s championship as well.”

Fortunately for the Fintona co-driver and his Japanese team-mate, they were comfortable in sixth when their major issues arrived, allowing them to manage the gap they had over Gus Greensmith’s Ford Puma, while their team-mate, Championship leader, Kalle Rovanpera was too far in front to catch.

That allowed them to take a more measured approach to the weekend to ensure a healthy return of spoils.

“On Friday, with starting third on the road there was very little we could do,” Johnston explained. “Kalle was in a worse position than us, and so was Thierry [Neuville] running first and second on the road, but as third car on the road it was very slippy and there was no chance at all we would have been able to do the same times EP [Esapekka Lappi, Toyota colleague] was able to do as last on the road.

“It was damage limitation this weekend because it’s maybe one of the worse rallies to be running towards the front and because we’ve been punching in some good results on the first couple of rallies it meant we were starting high up. But if you compare our pace to Kalle’s on Friday it was very very similar, there wasn’t a big difference in the times and they guys that were running behind had already used that advantage to create a bit of a gap.

“On Saturday we were already thinking about damage limitation and having a clean run with no drama. Unfortunately we got caught with the radiator but we were managing the gap to Gus so we could be smart and we were able to achieve what we set out to do.”

Aaron and Takamota will now turn their attentions to round six of the WRC on June 23rd to 26, an event the Fintona man is particularly looking forward to.

“Back to Africa! I’m really looking forward to getting back out there because it’s an event that I really look forward to,” he said. It’s something completely different to what rallying in Europe is like and I’m really looking forward to this one.”