TOYOTA Gazoo Racing World Rally Team has launched into Rally Finland by putting on a show on the traditional Harju super special stage in the heart of its home city Jyväskylä.

The action on the 75th anniversary edition of the event started on Thursday morning when the pre-event shakedown was held over the famous jumps of the Ruuhimäki stage, where Takamoto Katsuta set the fastest time after three runs.

As usual, the rally then began with the mixed-surface Harju stage close to the service park – and a stone’s throw from the TGR-WRT headquarters where the GR YARIS Rally1 cars are built. Elfyn Evans and Sébastien Ogier – both two-time previous winners of Rally Finland – shared the third-fastest time over the 2.58-kilometre stage.

Ogier has been reunited for this event with his long-time former co-driver Julien Ingrassia, with whom he won his first eight world titles. Ingrassia accepted a last-minute call to stand in for Vincent Landais, who was unable to join the team in Finland this week for personal reasons.

Katsuta, Finnish favourite Sami Pajari and Oliver Solberg rounded out the top seven, which was covered by less than three seconds.

TGR WRC Challenge Program driver and Jyväskylä resident Yuki Yamamoto started with the fifth fastest time within WRC2 in Harju, just 0.1s ahead of Team Principal and fellow GR Yaris Rally2 driver Jari-Matti Latvala.

Elfyn Evans (Driver car 33) said:

“As always we’ve had a really warm welcome coming here to Jyväskylä. This is a brilliant event and we want to make the most of our last opportunity to drive these roads with this generation of car. We had some rain fall earlier in the week which can hopefully help us a bit tomorrow opening the road. The sun has been back out since to dry the roads but we’ll fight as hard as we can and see what we can do.”

End of day one (Thursday):

  1. Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) 2m06.7s
  2. Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +1.1s
  3. Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +1.2s
  4. Sébastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +1.2s
  5. Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +1.8s
  6. Sami Pajari/Marko Salminen (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +1.9s
  7. Oliver Solberg/Elliott Edmondson (Toyota GR YARIS Rally1) +2.9s
  8. Esapekka Lappi/Enni Mälkönen (Hyundai i20 N Rally1) +3.0s
  9. Jon Armstrong/Shane Byrne (Ford Puma Rally1) +3.3s
  10. Robert Virves/Jakko Viilo (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) +4.1s

(Results as of 9.30pm on Thursday; for the latest results, visit www.wrc.com .

What's next?

Today (Friday), the action moves into the forests north-east of Jyväskylä where a loop of four stages is run twice. The classic Laukaa test is reversed for this year and paired with returning Saarikas plus the new Sydänmaa and Hoho tests. Another run through Harju completes the longest day of the event at 127.72 competitive kilometres.