Johnston delighted with fifth after difficult start

AARON Johnston ranks his and Takamoto Katsuta’s fifth placed finish at Rally Estonia as highly as any of the fourth placed finishes they have achieved this season, such was the difficulty of the event.

The Toyota Gazoo Racing Team Next Generation crew endured a difficult start to proceedings when they rolled their Rally1 Yari during shakedown on the Thursday morning.

That gave their crew little time to get the car ready for that afternoon’s ceremonial start and the first super special stage in the evening. Fortunately, the damage sustained after flipping the car at around 100kph was mainly cosmetic, apart from an issue with the radiator, so the team’s mechanics had their machine ready to go later that day.

“It was quite high speed, but he wasn’t over pushing but over the car went,” Johnston explained.

“It went up and did the full 360 in mid-air and landed on its side!

“Normally shakedown is the day before so they would have overnight to repair it.

“ When I got out of the car I was expecting to see bits lying everywhere but the car wasn’t that bad, thankfully.

“But the boys did an incredible job to get us out and ready for stage one that evening, so thanks to them.”

From Friday on, however, the conditions in Estonia deteriorated with rain causing the normally fast gravel stages to become even more treacherous in the mud.

The roads then began to deteriorate, with deep ruts making things even more challenging.

However, despite losing a lot of time during the first two stages on Friday morning, which Katsuta had never driven before, unlike the rest of the field, the Japanese driver and his Fintona co-driver soon clawed their way into the top five where they remained come Sunday afternoon, much to Johnston’s delight.

“From where we were on Friday morning to where we finished on Sunday afternoon, we’re very, very happy,” he beamed.

“I’d have broken your hand for fifth from where we were on Friday morning and genuinely this fifth place is on a level with the fourth placed finishes we’ve had this season.

“It was so tricky, so it was nice to come to the finish with a nice result and a lot of points and an extra point from the power stage.”

Johnston and Katsuta will now turn their attentions to Rally Finland in a couple of weeks time where the Japanese driver should go well as that’s where he lives during the season and is where he has done a lot of driving.

“He’s been extremely consistent all year and he has banged in a lot of good results, so I think in Finland we’ll see how things go but we’re looking forward to it,” Johnston concluded.