After a difficult start, Rally Chile never really got any better for Toyota's Japanese driver
Photography by Toyota
Words by Alasdair Lindsay, Head of Digital Strategy
Fridays on World Rally Championship gravel are critical. They set a driver up for the rally ahead: get stuck with a bad road position for Saturday morning and you’ll be stuck at the tail end of the field for the rest of the rally.
That’s the situation Takamoto Katsuta faced in Chile.
It’s nothing new. That pain was felt over and over again by his Toyota team-mate Elfyn Evans, sweeping loose gravel away across the midseason European events as championship leader.
Katsuta missed Chile last year, being benched after a fourth crash-induced retirement of the season at Acropolis Rally Greece. His car was given to Sami Pajari instead.
This year’s itinerary being an exact clone of the year before meant Pajari and the rest could get straight up to speed in a way that Katsuta couldn’t. But when he finished the opening loop of the rally 44.6s behind leader Evans in eighth place, the question couldn’t be avoided: where has the pace gone?
“It feels very, very strange,” Katsuta told DirtFish at the end of Friday morning. “I knew that it’s going to be a very tricky rally for me, missing the lack of experience from last year, but still, I was so surprised that I didn’t feel so well all over the stages from this morning. For some reason, I’m really, really struggling. I don’t know.
A difficult Friday left Katsuta with a poor road position for the rest of the rally
“I need to find something. But it doesn’t work so well, and it’s so hard to drive. And my self-confidence is not high. For sure, the rhythm and feeling is not there. So this is one of the reasons why it’s not so fast. But at the same time, it seems like a car doesn’t give me extra confidence either. So it’s a very, very difficult situation at the moment.”
It didn’t get much better on Saturday. Katsuta usurped Grégoire Munster’s Ford Puma on Friday afternoon, only to spin on Lota and fall back down to eighth again. And just as it looked like he’d finally get back ahead of the M-Sport driver, he spun again on the re-run of Lota.
Katsuta bagged seventh by the finish, half a minute clear of Munster but 38.3s behind sixth-placed Kalle Rovanperä, who’d lost a minute on Friday with a tire pushed off the rim and started earlier in the road order.
Faced with making sense of how his rally had gone south, finishing over two minutes adrift of rally winner and Toyota teammate Sébastien Ogier, his explanation was multi-faceted.
“It’s quite new stages for me,” said Katsuta. He was right: the Sunday itinerary was entirely different from the 2023 edition he’d last contested. His pace on the final day had been better; second-fastest on the first pass of BioBío was the only time all rally he cracked the top three stage times.
“We were matching some times and it was quite fine,” Katsuta insisted. “Even [though] I was quite struggling in the car. It was, I don’t know why, really behaving very differently compared to yesterday [Saturday]. So I need to understand why.
“Maybe all together [I was] struggling with lack of confidence, with it not going well at the start. And then we went starting in the front [from Saturday] and just making it so difficult after the beginning of the rally.”
His strong run through BioBío was not repeated when it was run again as the powerstage, where he could only muster sixth-fastest time.
“I’m very surprised,” said Katsuta. “It’s very strange because first pass [of the powerstage], we were second fastest and quite OK. Then second loop, OK, sometimes typical situation, but you have a much narrower line and you have to make it lines and I had four cars in the front. But still, not looks like not enough. All the cars [ahead] got better and better.
“In terms of time, it’s not too far. But I was struggling quite a lot to get the turn in and it was not so easy to drive today.
Katsuta will aim to recapture his 2024 form at Central European Rally
“I’m not happy but finally [the rally] has ended.”
Suffice to say Katsuta is glad that Chile is now behind him. He’s now hoping a return to the asphalt of Central European Rally – where he scored maximum bonus points on the final day last year – will be a precursor to chasing a blockbuster result at his home rally.
“Let’s just forget about this weekend and just go to preparing the on Tarmac setup and tarmac driving and everything,” said Katsuta.
“For sure it’s going to be quite tricky as always on Friday [with] those Czech Republic stages. I don’t know what kind of stage we have this year, but normally it’s quite difficult for a lot of cuttings and pollution. But I at least have confidence that we can do something better than this weekend.
“The next two rallies are quite important for me, especially Japan. I try to make something best [career-wise] so far in Rally Japan.”
Words:Alasdair Lindsay
Tags: Rally Chile, Rally Chile 2025, Takamoto Katsuta, WRC, WRC 2025
Publish Date September 21, 2025 DirtFish 
https://dirtfish-editorial.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com/2025/09/QnoXyExO-Katsuta11CHL25mr325-780x520.jpg September 21, 2025
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