Taking tyre cues from Tänak: Taka's Croatia Rally gamble – WRC

In motorsport, taking risks can often lead to great rewards. But for Takamoto Katsuta, his gamble at the Croatia Rally didn’t quite pay off.
Katsuta shares a close friendship with M-Sport Ford driver and 2019 WRC champion Ott Tänak, so when he noticed Tänak swapping to wet weather Pirelli tyres before the Stojdraga-Hartje stage on Friday afternoon, he decided to follow suit.
Both drivers soon realised their error as the stage wasn’t wet enough for the tyres to be effective, with the pair dropping chunks of time to those who had opted for slick rubber.
“I just wanted to check what Ott had, because he was behind me on the road,” Katsuta explained. “Pierre-Louis (Loubet) was behind me, and he started to change his tyres. I was thinking, ‘why is he changing tyres?’, and he was putting wets on.
“In this moment we didn’t have any [phone] signal because we were in a very deep forest, so we didn’t know how bad the weather would be. When I looked and saw Ott was putting his wets on, I thought, ‘okay, this must be something’.
“Already in the previous stage I had spun and lost like 10 seconds or something, so I had nothing to lose. It works sometimes, it didn’t work this time, but it was worth a try,” Katsuta added.
Despite the setback, Katsuta recovered to secure sixth overall with his GR Yaris, ending a string of challenging results in Sweden and Mexico. He will replace the absent Sébastien Ogier in Toyota’s third points-scoring car at Vodafone Rally de Portugal next week (11 – 14 May).
“Portugal will be quite important for me and for the team also,” Katsuta said. “I don’t know what the plan is – I need to have a meeting with the team. Of course, if I have the pace I want to get a good result, so I will try to prepare well.”
Ott Tänak believes his M-Sport Ford team still has some work to do despite securing a top-three result at last week’s Croatia …
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