NEWS

Rally Japan stage summaries

The Suzuki World Rally Team duo of P-G Andersson and his co-driver Jonas Andersson have made an excellent WRC class debut on Rally Japan and will begin Sunday’s competition in seventh place.
We spoke to Jonas after the pre-event reconnaissance to get his verdict on the final day’s nine stages:
jonas Andersson [left] and his driver Per-gunnar Andersson
In general:
“With the exception of the Sapporo Super Special, Sunday’s stages are based in the countryside about 50km south of the city, not far from the ones we did on Saturday. The location means they are generally really fast and I think the two longest ones will be the fastest of the whole event. Many of the stages on Sunday have banks by the roadside rather than trees or ditches, and that allows you to push a bit harder. Okay, you can’t lean the car on them quite like you can the snow banks in Sweden, but you can have a big push and get away with it a lot of times!”
Stage by stage: SS21/26: Koyka - 3.57km
Like Saturday the day starts with a short spectator stage. And like Saturday’s this one is extremely fast. The first 1.5km is on a very loose surface and the road is narrow. I think the stage will cut up a bit for the second pass. Then, after 1.6km, we turn a junction right onto a wider road that gets faster and faster as it approaches the finish.
SS22/SS27: Iwanke - 13.57km
This is a medium to high-speed forestry stage and it’s almost completely flat. The first half is very quick on mainly wide-open hard-packed roads. At the 5.4km mark the road gets narrower and there are some very slippery patches. I think this section will get very rutted on the second pass. There are a concrete rain water gutters across the road on many corners which could make things tricky, too.
SS23/28: Sikot - 27.76km
Another almost flat, medium to high-speed forestry stage and I reckon this is the biggest challenge of the day. In some places it’s a bit like the stages in Finland or New Zealand, with a nicely flowing road and some crests but in others it’s terribly bumpy. The last bit is extremely rough and the sequence of bumps leading to the finish line could throw you just about anywhere if you take them flat out.
SS24/29: Imeru - 2.3km
This is the short stage designed primarily for spectators which we drove twice on Saturday. It’s basically like a Super Special or a rallycross circuit. The road is more or less flat, mainly wide and should be good fun to drive. The chances are the road will be very rutted by Sunday because be will already have driven it twice before.
SS25: Sapporo Super Special Stage - 1.49km
The fifth and final trip to the head-to-head stage built inside the Sapporo Dome baseball stadium. The Super Special shouldn’t cause too many problems. Even though the road surface is extremely smooth and we’re on gravel tyres, at shakedown it gave better grip than I thought it would. If it rains, however, we’ll all need to be careful of the two corners outside - especially as most of the barriers are made of solid concrete.
Detailed information on Rally Japan, including the entry list, itinerary and maps of the stages can be found in the ‘Rallies’ section at wrc.com. This link will take you there.
Follow this link to go directly to the split times page, where you can follow the progress of the cars through each stage.