Disappointment isn’t a strong enough word for ‘gutted’ Johnston

AFTER stage nine of Rally Sweden on Saturday morning, Fintona’s Aaron Johnston and Takamoto Katsuta were sitting second overall and just 0.9 of a second behind leader, their former Toyota Gazoo Racing team-mate Esapekka Lappi.

Unfortunately for the Toyota pair, less than a stage later they were stuck in a snowbank unable to move their Rally1 Yaris, while their Hyundai rival was able to take the overall victory by a comfortable margin following Friday’s day of carnage that saw several front-runners struggle.

“We’re massively disappointed of course,” Johnston acknowledged. “It probably isn’t even strong enough to sum it up.

“Disappointed, gutted, heatbroken, whatever word you want to use but it wasn’t meant to be at the weekend despite our best efforts.

“It’s a shame we went off and couldn’t keep the fight going with EP because it was really enjoyable.”

Having impressed during shakedown and Thursday’s night stage, Johnston and Katsuta hit the ground running on Friday, engineering a lead after the first loop of three stages as two-time world champion Kalle Rovanpera and another ex-WRC title holder, Ott Tanak, both left the road, while Elfyn Evans and Thierry Neuville also struggled.

And they maintained their advantage over Lappi throughout most of the afternoon’s four stages, even though heavy snow made conditions treacherous and their Finnish rival’s late road position massively advantageous.

Unfortunately, even after they took a sizeable chunk out of Lappi’s lead on Saturday’s first stage, they were caught out on stage 10 and left to think about what might have been.

“Of course, Kalle and Ott had their off road excursions on Friday morning and it was ourselves and EP left to battle it out and with EP being last car on the road and us fifth on the road it made the job very difficult to keep the fight going,” Johnston observed.

“On Friday I think we did a good job to be leading the rally after the first loop, and to keep EP within touching distance all through Friday afternoon when the heavy snow came because he had the best of the conditions.

“To only drop 12 seconds or so over the four stages on Friday afternoon to Esapekka was definitely a massive job to do and it meant we could still fight with him, well the plan was for the rest of the weekend.

“But even the first one on the Saturday morning we were 2.5 or 2.6 seconds quicker than him and the gap was down to less than a second, so yeah, it was all shaping up to be a real good fight. But unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be.”

Throughout the nine stages they completed, Johnston and Katsuta were proving masters of the wintry conditions in Sweden, using the snowbanks when required to set a blistering pace.

Unfortunately, however, they were eventually caught by one of the snowbanks on a particularly high speed section, which meant they paid the ultimate price.

“The snowbanks are your best friend up until they aren’t!,” Johnston admitted.

“You can really get away with some massive angles and over-speed but if they do catch you and suck you in you have no chance to get out, especially like the corner where we did because it was such high speed.

“Even if we had got out and lost 30-40 seconds we’d still have been on the podium but we’d still have been disappointed not to be able to fight for the win because, while a podium would be a massive result, when you have the opportunity to push for a victory that’s all you really want as a competitor.”